Anyone want to discuss Hereditary? Please?
This movie absolutely destroyed me.
To be fair, I am very affected by the sadness and trauma of others, so it's not surprising that this movie almost killed me. To borrow from a comment I made on another user's post "This movie was a 2 hour long gut punch, and the end was a fever dream." It was so very traumatic, exhausting, uncomfortable, and TERRIFYING. And traditional horror movies do not ever scare me.
My overwhelming feeling for most of the movie was profound sadness. This family torn apart, the horrible things they say and think... the panic attack that Peter has and when he asks his friend to hold his hand? That was one of the times I actually cried. His numb stupor after his sisters head gets knocked off by a telephone pole(!!!!!). His mother's screams when she finds her headless daughter in the back of the car. The desperation when Steve splashes Annie in the face with water. The two times (one reality, one dream) Annie says just awful things to Peter. Peter smashing his face into the desk. Peter screaming/pleading "Mommy!" as Annie tries to get into the attic after him. These are all times I felt overwhelming sadness. Tons of other feelings: anger, disgust, terror, etc. But huge amounts of sadness that I've never felt during other horror movies.
Let me preface this by saying I know what the director has said about his vision and "what the movie really means." But I've never cared about a movie enough to actually fundamentally disagree with the person who created it before. self-deprecating eyeroll
This movie as a straightforward demon-possession/ occult movie does nothing for me. The whole time I had no doubt that it was a family torn apart by mental illness and that devastated and terrified me.
I'm going to post my inexpert interpretation as a comment. It won't be a synopsis, but there will be oodles of spoilers.
*Edit: I thought the movie was great. I don't know if I'll ever see it again.
Annie is a woman who has spent a large part of her life consumed by the fear that she will turn out crazy like the rest of her family and this has made her determined to live a normal life. She and her husband cut off contact with her mother when Annie gives birth to Peter because grandma is extremely mentally ill. When Annie gives birth to Charlie, she gives in to grandma and creepiness ensues including bottle-feeding that Annie will one day turn into allegorical breastfeeding art.
The movie starts when grandma dies, and this kicks off Annie's minor mental breakdown: she was not close with her mother, she was a little scared of her, but she still feels so many emotions connected to her death that she doesn't know what to do with them. She goes to a grief support group where we learn that she has been "forced to go to these before," and she starts showing a little tiny bit of mania. After Charlie gets her fucking head knocked off by a fucking telephone pole, Peter has major PTSD/guilt and is having trouble focusing, and Annie goes off the deep end. I believe she went to grief support group in reality at least once, but then she started having delusions (or at least augmented reality) of Joan. I think Joan really mirrors her mania especially after she "finds out she can talk to her dead grandson." The shot near the end of Joan's apartment with the picture of Peter made me think that
to emulate the rituals that her crazy mother had been doing.
I believe that Annie did try to miscarry Peter, not because she was trying to save him from being born a demon, but to save him from the pain of having a mentally ill mother and potentially from hereditary mental illness himself. I believe that she dug up her mother's grave, somehow got her to the attic. I believe that she (and maybe Peter) was having a delusion when she shows Steve that she can talk to Charlie through the cup; I believe that she was writing with the pen, which prompted Steve to throw water on her and then later to say "I am not going to pretend with you anymore." I believe that Annie was trying to pull Peter's head off in her sleep. I believe that Annie did burn her husband alive when she was having delusions of needing to burn the book. I believe that we were seeing the world through Annie's eyes (most of the time and) when she was having delusions of float/flying through rooms behind Peter. I believe that Peter lost his mind upon seeing his father burned alive, knowing his mother did it. I believe that he cut her head off with wire, then leapt from the window in a paranoid delusion.
I believe that he either died there and had a fever-dream of all of the shit up in the treehouse, or he was relatively unharmed but lost the rest of his little sanity, climbed up into the treehouse and saw a terrifying shrine that his mother created in the style of something Charlie would have done. The people are delusions.
I know that Occam's Razor and the director say that none of the above is true, but the reality of extreme mental illness (I have regular anxiety and have had depression, so I know that this is not the true face of mental illness) is what is so scary to me. The pain, guilt, and delusions shake me to my core. I still feel shaken when I think of it.
I'm sorry this is one million words long. I'd love to hear what you thought of the movie.
This is good. I definitely thought it could've been left as a mental illness story, not occult, and have been just as (or more) terrifying. I, too, thought Annie as an unreliable narrator would've worked well (after all, Steve didn't seem to react at all the way someone who'd seen something supernatural -- Even so far as to write an email to a psychologist about his wife... Why would you do that, if you saw supernatural stuff?).
So true! I didn't think about that part. I'm bummed out that the director was so concrete about it being a demon-possession, but I can think whatever I want! ;-)
How did you like the movie?
Idc about spoilers but I wanted to ask as someone who hasn't seen it yet, is it worth going to see? I ask because I can't tell if you didn't like the movie or if it was so horrible you loved it...
Sorry dude. Me neither.
I loved Hereditary. I thought it was a great movie, but I don't know if I'll ever watch it again. If you don't like slow-burning psychological horror, you might think it's boring. But I'd say give it a shot. It is true art, if disturbing.
Ah yes... my most favourite and yet simultaneously least favourite kind of movie.
Grave of Fireflies
Elephant
Requiem for a Dream
Trainspotting
Life is Beautiful
Leaving Las Vegas
Yep! My husband, too. I'm less inclined to them. :-D
I should ask him if he's seen these!