Recently, I had to do a group project for my female supernatural class about any movie/show/book of our choosing, and we landed on Hereditary. This movie was super big when it came out, with a lot of the colloquial discourse surrounding how frightening and creepy it was. That was mostly my reaction too. However, upon rewatch, I finally noticed all the different layers and themes. I’m definitely behind on this discourse because there are literally multi-hour-long YouTube videos analyzing this movie, but it was really interesting to look into the movie in the context of my class.
We focused a lot on the women’s roles versus the men’s roles in supernatural media, such as Carmilla and chapter 3 of Dracula, as well as themes of consent, identity, mental illness, puberty, and so on. I was searching my brain for something interesting to write this week for this blog, and I thought it would be fun to discuss this movie. The last time I talked about a movie was when I compared and contrasted the Suspiria remake to the original, so hopefully you all like reading me talk about horror movies again. This is basically a breakdown of my project, which was looking at the women’s roles and relationships throughout the movie, as well as the place of mental illness. If it wasn’t obvious, there will be many spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen the movie, I’d recommend reading a synopsis to understand this article (or you could watch it and come back, but definitely check on trigger warnings — this movie is a hard watch).
Topic 1 — Portrayal of Women
The women in the movie take the spotlight as main characters, but they all end up serving Paimon, a male demon that wants a male host. Women betray other woman (such as Joanne betraying Annie) in order to appease the male demon, which could be a comment on how women can be convinced into reinforcing the patriarchy. It’s very interesting how it is primarily women in the cult leading the action and basically orchestrating the whole plot. The family, especially the men within it, are more of a means to an end. It’s also an interesting comment on how boys used to be preferred over girls as children so they can carry on the family name and such. In this case in the movie, the boy was desired to end up as a host to the demon. If Annie had only had girls, the family may have been luckier and not ended up as human sacrifices. This goes against the old patriarchal notion that it’s luckier to have boys.
It’s also interesting to see a movie in which the main female characters (Annie, Joanne, Ellen) are all mothers, a character that is often overlooked in movies. The moms are often silly or kind of out of the picture, but here we get to see their perspective. A lot more recent movies showcase these less common perspectives, but I think it’s important to show these types of people as complex and multidimensional. I think moms more than dads have a lot of weight placed on them and are expected to just kind of get over things, but here we get to see how Annie works on herself and her grief. We see a lot of the feelings that moms feel the need to hide in order to not be criticized by others for being human. I would assume both parents feel the need to push things down in order to focus on their kids, but I think the pressure is definitely a bit more on mothers to not ever mess up in the slightest. In Hereditary, the mothers are humanized and shown fallible even when they try their hardest. I think that’s important to showcase more often. This relates to the next topic.
Topic 2 — Mother-Child Relationships
I thought all the parental relationships were interesting in this movie because all of them are so tense. A lot of times in movies, relationships with teen children are tense for no reason other than the child being a teen, but this movie had plenty of other reasons for the rift between mother and son. I thought it was interesting how we got to see a woman who didn’t want to be a mother but then ended up being happy to have kept the child without all the pro-life undertones. The emotions all felt very raw and real without trying to convince us of anything, which I appreciated. We also saw all the nitty gritty details of their life and arguments, such as the famous dinner table scene where Annie yells at her son Peter for cursing at her. We can see the tension build up as both mother and son partially blame the other for the death of Charlie.
The relationship between Annie and her son was very complex because Peter remembers his mother almost killing him and his sister when they were younger. I’m not sure how much he held that against her before the period where the movie begins, but at the very least I think he’d be subconsciously distrustful of her. I’ve seen some theories that Annie almost killed the children in her sleep in order to save them from what would happen next, but that would mean that deep down she understood what was going on. I don’t agree with that idea, and I think if it were the case she’d be a lot less into the idea of the seance as well. However, perhaps it was some sort of deep trauma over her brother having killed himself and basically blaming their mom, so maybe she internalized or “inherited” this idea of the parent killing the child. There’s also the fact that Peter leaves Charlie’s dead body in the car for the mother to find, which is probably something she’d struggle to ever completely forgive.
There’s also Annie’s relationship with her own mother, Ellen. She says that she was previously no contact with her mother until she was pregnant with her daughter Charlie. As much as it is very much needed in certain situation, the no-contact with your parent shows an extreme in the relationship. Then, her daughter Charlie ends up being very close with Ellen. I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it would be for your child to be so attached to your previously estranged mother, so that just adds to the constant ongoing tensions between the mothers and their children. There isn’t really any relief in the family relationships for Annie except for perhaps her husband Steve, although even that relationship grows strained throughout the movie. It’s also important to note that he is a psychiatrist. This leads us to the next topic.
Topic 3 — The Meaning of the Title “Hereditary”
There are a couple things being “inherited,” and this analysis also relies on if you believe that the events unfolding were real or made up in Annie’s head. The first one is the occult, as Ellen passes down the responsibilities for her satanic cult to her family as they’re used as pawns for the demon Paimon. I honestly wasn’t sure if this part was real or not, and I struggle to identify if I believe all the events were truly happening. I definitely believed it during my first watch, but I was less sure during my second watch.
There is also the mental illness being inherited, as studies show that they can be passed down genetically. This is where I think it’s important that Annie’s husband is a psychiatrist. I think it’s interesting that Steve, as a mental health professional, chose a wife with such a complex history of mental illness in her family. Her mother had DID, her father had psychotic depression, and her brother was schizophrenic. We aren’t given any confirmation about which, if any, mental illnesses Annie suffers from, but there is always the chance she inherits one of them from her family. This only adds to the distrust that Steve feels towards Annie as the movie goes on, and we can see the switch happening where he starts to feel the need to protect his children from his wife. This leads into the next thing being inherited: family trauma and grief.
Family trauma can become a cycle in which a traumatized child turns into a parent that ends up doing the same thing to their children. As Annie’s mother was, in her brother’s eyes, responsible for his death, she gives a similar trauma to her son by almost killing him. Her erratic behavior after Charlie’s death is also likely traumatizing to her son, which is when the father starts to step in for their son’s sake. You can tell he’s trying to prevent these issues from being passed down, but ultimately he cannot stop it from happening. The cycle isn’t broken, and the trauma continues to be passed down in the family.
Well, that’s all I’ll go into today. I can definitely do a part two with more ideas I had about the movie because there is just so much to analyze and pull apart within this movie. Another idea that would be interesting to expand more upon is the sense of powerlessness in the movie, so let me know if you want a part 2 at some point in the future. Also, just let me know your thoughts in general about this post or the movie! It’s fun to discuss these things with other people. This post ended up being a longer one, but I hope you enjoyed it! Stay tuned for more weekly posts.
I also feel like as far as mother-child relationships as well as patriarchal elements, Annie’s relationship with her mother is interesting because Annie obviously had some form of rejection to her mothers beliefs, cult aside, to lead to estrangement. In the eyes of the mother she doesn’t aid in her cause while if she was a man then she could at least be a pawn to serve the cults purpose. Because she’s not, the mother resents her for not furthering the cause of the cult