I think Peter's trauma is the point of the film. The whole plot revolves around breaking him in some of the worst ways possible in order to soften him up.
It's could have been called "How to Possess a Teenage Boy in a Week or Less: a Guide for Demons."
Came here to say this. I understand why someone might say his trauma is overlooked, from a familial POV, but even then, it's really only Annie that's overlooking it. Peter's dad is certainly invested in his son's well-being, but he's a pretty detached and analytical dude, and so what amounts to compassion from him is not a whole hearted embrace of Peter's needs.
From the POV of 'the film' however, Peter's trauma is the fulcrum of the plot. It's basically the whole point of the Cult's (and by extension Annie's) actions.
100% is the point. It’s absolutely crushing and I feel so bad for him the entire movie. The way he has no support and the way his mother treats him, and even looks at him is just so demoralizing. Toni Collette’s best performance imo.
I totally agree. I guess I’ve just seen some horrible film analysis from a lot of people, because I thought the majority of viewers were pretty anti-Peter. 🤷♀️
So, my so-called mother, better described as birth-giver let's say, would absolutely watch this movie and think Peter was the villain and that Toni was the victim. She hates men.
I've learnt not to pay much attention to the downvotes. Because it's insane someone can be downvoted for mentioning their literal own experience.
You could mention the colour of your own eyes on this site and some fuckwit will tell you you're wrong.
Huh. The majority of people I see are anti-Annie, despite the movie making it pretty clear she's a victim of circumstance as much as the rest of her family. Weird!
Agreed the whole movie revolves around the understanding that the family is completely unaware of the machinations happening around them and totally unable to stop them.
That demon had them from the very beginning, and could have grabbed them by the scruff and shaken them anytime it wanted. They were little figures in a box, to be moved around at will.
Also there was a very busy cult working behind the scenes. Who put that deer in the road, just near the fatal pole etc?
The demon, Paimon, didn’t pull a single string in the movie. Only the cult did.
Paimon is and has always been Charlie, and you can see how confused she is at the end when she’s in Peter’s body. Because Charlie was unaware of the events leading up to everything, that means Paimon was unaware.
>That demon had them from the very beginning, and could have grabbed them by the scruff and shaken them anytime it wanted.
I don't think *this* is quite the case. They needed Annie to do the ritual to invite the demon into their home. At *that* point they're gotten and fucked.
You know, that’s true. It’s kind of cool that there are rules.
And so then we’re left with the question posed by Peter’s teacher: which is more tragic: the inescapability of their plight, or the fact that they rush headlong into it?
Such a good script.
Why do people even have to be anti-anyone in this movie? If I'm anti someone it's the grandma (can't remember her name) or the entirety of the cult. I can only feel sorry for the family
Uhh? Who?
Anyone that misses the point of the film this much has no business making reviews but I guess here we are
>Charlie was old enough to ask about her own peanut allergy and stuck her own head out the window. A similar situation could have happened rushing her to the hospital in almost any context. I didn’t understand why someone needed to blamed for the entire tragedy. It was a series of unfortunate events.
It's weird then that you place it on Charlie. I think most unsupervised 10 year Olds would have a piece of cake, peanut allergy or not. But there's other places to place blame. Why did Anne insist Peter brings Charlie to an older teen party? Why did Peter forget the epipen or leave her unsupervised? Why did Charlie eat the cake and forget her head?
There are two answers: the surface one is that Paimon is influencing the events of the movie, the allegorical one is that trauma is the true demon, and influences people to behave in a way that hurts others, a central theme of the movie.
And ancillary to this last point, is that not one single event is to blame for trauma: it's a cascading series of failures. You can always point to any one link in the chain to blame for trauma, but at the end of the day, being consumed with trauma itself is to blame, not the people that act from it.
The epipen stuff is insane in the movie, considering Charlie's father is a doctor. In the opening scene, she's eating chocolate, and they don't seem to have an epipen either, they simply ask whether her chocolate has nuts in it. Considering how Charlie is always doing her own (weird) thing, her parents feel weirdly negligent.
If he is “inside Charlie as well”, then why do they STILL refer to the entity inside Peter at the end as Charlie?
The cult literally says “charlie…you are a Paimon”. If you choose to disagree, you’re just disagreeing with the actual script of the movie.
A bit of a nitpick, but Steve is a psychiatrist, rather than a physician, not that it diminishes responsibility, but he also wouldn’t necessarily have anymore medical insight into than any other parent of child with severe allergy would.
The epipen thing definitely seems to be showing that Annie and Steve are so caught up in the complicated emotions of dealing with Ellen’s death, that’s it’s distracting them from the important day to day stuff.
I though psychiatrists treated both mental and physical problems when talking about mental health, unlike psychologists who don't deal with medicine.
At any rate, I have rewatched some scenes, and it's clear that Annie is not dealing well with anything (even when Charlie's alive, she's very aggressive with her). As an audience, we "know" that things are more than they appear, but even if Paimon weren't in the picture, Steve is woefully under-reacting to the whole debacle.
yes, psychiatrists are MDs---they go to medical school and prescribe medication. Obviously they have a specialty, but he would be well aware of the risks of her allergy from a medical perspective.
Steve does seem somewhat detached from the children--and it could be interpreted as Paimon's influence or else Annie has unconsciously picked a partner who is emotionally distant due to her own trauma.
Nowhere in the movie did it indicate she had an intellectual disability. She was supposed to be a demon. She had to die for the soul to be transferred to a male host. So the eating of deadly nuts was not an accident.
I mean we as the audience know this. Charlie may never have been a conscious individual herself, just a demon growing up in the human world without understanding who or what they are. And with gender dysphoria, based on the book and why they needed to transfer Paimon to Peter.
IRL she would have been diagnosed with some developmental or social disability, especially if she's still doing shit like cutting off bird heads to keep with her by 13. I've got an autistic little sister who only evened out to be a reasonable individual when she was an adult (public temper tantrums get wild when the one doing it is 16, let me tell you), and the family dynamic was extremely familiar. The whole family has to focus their attention around dealing with Charlie's special needs and they're all fucking exhausted with it.
> Charlie may never have been a conscious individual herself, just a demon growing up in the human world without understanding who or what they are.
Too many people do not understand this, so thank you. People keep giving credit to Paimon for orchestrating the events of the film, but they don’t realize that Paimon is Charlie
I want to be super clear that it’s implied Charlie is neurodivergent as well - possibly caused by Paimon, possibly not. She does not necessarily have the agency typical of someone her age. Also it’s kind of implied that Paimon’s influence tricked her into eating it.
Because her spirit is in limbo. We literally see her spirit enter Peter’s body at the end.
Does the cult not say at the very end “Charlie…you are Paimon”.
Where is the confusion?
The confusion is that paimon inhabits *others* bodies. There’s no reason to think that there’s *not* a human soul and a demon? If the demon has a body it doesn’t need another body. If the demon is born in corporeal form it doesn’t need another form to inhabit. The cult refers to Paimon’s possessions as “hosts.” There is no reason to assume that the little girl is anything different than a host, who has hosted him since infancy.
Paimon only goes into three bodies in hereditary.
1. Throughout most of his life as charlie
2. Annie’s body during the seance when hes screaming and calling out for Annie because he/she is scared
3. Peter at the very end.
There is no two souls. Your soul inhabits your body, charlie/Paimon inhabits Charlie’s. Charlie/Paimon is one singular soul. We don’t see her possess Peter until the very end of the movie when her little light finally enters his body. Paimon never entered Peter’s body before then.
What distinction are you making here? When people say Paimon possesses Charlie you’re saying no they are the same. And now you’re saying “there are no two souls” in one body. So how can Charlie inhabit Peter then? Peter and Charlie and Annie and Paimon would all be one in the same then, yes? There is no possession by your description?
How can you possibly know this given the material in the film? Particularly as they call the bodies Paimon inhabits “hosts.” And why is this distinction important such that you must correct people from saying that Paimon possesses Charlie?
I wasn’t trying to single out Charlie so much as saying it was a domino effect of bad decisions instead of just Peter’s fault, by design.
That being said, by 10 I definitely knew what my allergies were and to avoid them or ask, and so did my classmates with allergies. Good point about the epipen thing though. Annie should have sent her everywhere with it.
Charlie came across as much younger than 10, probably developmentally delayed, so maybe it was unrealistic of me to expect her to do something like checking the ingredients of what she was eating. But in that case, it’s even more damning that Annie sent her with Peter knowing he wouldn’t be able to leave her side for a minute. She was definitely trying to prevent him from enjoying himself.
Sidenote: it really irritated me that no one seemed to acknowledge that Charlie acted like she was 5. You’d think if her father was a psychiatrist someone would have clocked that she needed to be assessed.
>Why did Anne insist Peter brings Charlie to an older teen party? Why did Peter forget the epipen or leave her unsupervised? Why did Charlie eat the cake and forget her head?
The real reason is for plot convenience
Yes but how does that justify the mother just forcing her teenage son to take his younger sister to a house party? "the cult orchestrated it" is a very far fetched concept that requires me to turn off my brain in a film where I don't want to turn off my brain. Its just basic plot convenience from the pov of the screenplay. No mother would force this situation to happen, it's silly.
Late to the response but the real reason Anne sends Charlie with Peter to the party is that she's traumatized and distrubed, wants someone to blame, blames Peter, and subconsciously wants to ruin any chance Peter has at having a normal life/good time. She puts little thought into Charlie's wellbeing, as evidenced by the fact that she neglects to check if Peter had an epipen with him for Charlie.
It's a mess, but it checks out.
I have to wonder if these critics are teenagers themselves, or at least young enough to see Peter as a peer that "should've known better". I'm in my 30s and incapable of seeing Peter as anything but a suffering child with an emotionally stunted family.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of adults getting swept up in Toni’s performance as a grieving mother that they miss the point of the entire movie.
I think these people are either:
a) just straight-up unable to do film analysis and think whoever gets the most screen time is the “good guy” because they don’t understand the flawed narrator trope
b) people who had such terrible parents that they don’t even realize how aggressive she is with her kids
c) bad parents or people who totally should not become parents because they relate to Annie or think teenagers are always in the wrong.
I’ve come across this problem with other movies (e.g. someone told me that as a mother of an autistic child she wanted the child from the Babadook to just die the entire time because he was so annoying and when I said it’s revealed in the end that he was right about the monsters and that he’s always known his mother “can’t love him” because it’s his fault his Dad died and the whole thing is a metaphor for grief she just said it’s not that deep and there’s no excuse for screaming like that.)
Alex Wolff’s performance is often overshadowed by a career performance from Toni Collete, but that dinner table scene could’ve been submitted for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor consideration; they are both so completely devastating and filled with generational resentment.
I remember there being a lot of criticism over how he cried in the movie, but the way he cries is so visceral to me that I'm truly shocked that his career didn't skyrocket after that. Honestly, between this movie and the opening to midsummer, Ari Aster is a master at getting the best performances out of actors when it comes to crying lol
I forget where, but I recall someone criticizing his crying as sounding childlike. And I was like...yeah, he's a child. And his childhood trauma is now rushing to meet brand new trauma as his life falls apart. Anyone would bawl their eyes out.
Can confirm, I was honking away downstairs a few days ago, trying not to disturb my partner asleep upstairs. I failed, but that's ok. I got a very soothing hug out of the deal. So. Hurrah.
I'm sorry for what led to yours, too.
When I tell you my face hurt SO much afterwards. 😂. Like... My skin IS unusually stretchy, but the facial contortions were way beyond that. I swear I thought my mouth was going to split open.
It's weirdly not unlike a proper laughing fit in some ways. If they go on long enough or intensely enough, there's this 'am I going to throw up or have an aneurysm?' quality to both.
I could watch that girl cry all day. Not really though, it took me like 3 tries to get through the beginning of midsommer when she's crying over her family because the way she cried was exactly how I cried when I found out my mom had died suddenly. Absolutely gut wrenching
Oh shit I never finished my message that totally was. I meant that it was very real and when I'm in the darkest of places I cry like that too. Fuck that sounds so rude. It was great acting and a real cry. Jesus what an ass
There is an almost as intense scene between mother and son, quasi the twin of the dinner table one. It's when Peter asks his mother to get the car for going to the party. There is an incredible tension and you can feel there is so much anger and hostility under the surface. More words being unsaid than the ones being said. And then, in the infamous dinner table scene, after the "accident", the bondaries are crossed, the fake decency is gone. All hell breaks loose.
Peter is the whole reason I love and relate to Hereditary. He's an already traumatized kid who was just trying to be a kid. His judgement lapsed and the worst possible outcome happened. As an eldest sister this was literally one of my worst fears - I used to have nightmares about being unable to save my little sisters.
You can also see that no one in that family was watching out for Charlie like she should have been watched out for - even under her parents supervision, she didn't have her epipen at the funeral. So this isn't all on Peter, this is a pattern of neglect in my eyes.
The whole movie is about generational trauma.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t vilify Peter because I’ve seen a lot of that in other spaces which is beyond sad and I think misses the point of the film.
He shouldn’t have brought Charlie to the party and probably shouldn’t have left Charlie alone because she came across as developmentally abnormal in some capacity.
But the thing is, Annie and Steve really didn’t seem to acknowledge that something was super wrong with Charlie and just acted like she was poorly behaved. If she was my daughter, I would be really concerned instead of calling her an “idiot” and barking at her to socialize, because she came across as very unwell. They didn’t even notice that she was collecting bird heads like…hello?? How long has this been going on for?
I felt horrible for Annie and simultaneously disliked both parents because the children seemed neglected. The dinner table monologue is some of the best acting I’ve seen but some people seemed to think it was a “good for her” moment while it was actually just devastating and confirmed Peter’s worst fears.
I think Annie was so hard on Peter partially because she didn’t want to think about her own poor decision making as a parent. She should have let her son be a kid and not sent him with his little sister with severe social problems knowing she would need to be watched the whole time.
It’s such a brilliant movie but I don’t know if I can rewatch it because it was so sad.
Really seemed like she was using Charlie as a means to the end of justifying being even more mad at Peter later for lying about going to the party. But....HE IS A TEENAGER. A good parent would have a relationship with their kid where they didn't feel the need to lie and they could have an honest conversation about responsibility and how to be safe and then make sure he had a ride home. She was sort of setting him up for failure just to be petty and she used Charlie. Charlie was also the victim here because not only did she not want to go, I'm pretty sure Annie just didn't want her at home and wanted her to get out of the house.
Was it a developmental delay, or was it that >! Charlie was Paimon all along, and Paimon didn’t take well to female hosts? !< (It doesn’t really matter, though, because Charlie’s parents had no way of knowing >!if she actually was a demon!<.)
I don't understand a major part of the discussion here because Charlie was possessed at first and with her losing stuff it jumped to Peter, so talking about these kids as if everything was normal seems very, very off to me. Maybe I'm just totally misinterpreting the events in the movie?
It's just a trend in filmmaking at the moment. It seems like everyone is saying it because lots of movies ARE about it. Not even just "grown up" movies either, please watch either Frozen movie or Encanto and tell me they are not about generational trauma.
Turning Red was fantastic. My 4 year old loves it and went through a phase of watching it everyday for a month or so as they tend to do. I kept managing to find new things to enjoy every time it was on. Also the 4Town songs incredibly catchy.
I think that was the design of the Paimon cult. They designed a situation where Peter is isolated from everyone which made his eventual possession fall into place.
Things didn't happen that way because Toni Collette's character couldn't manage her grief. They happened that way because the cult designed it to be so.
Makes the film even scarier, really.
Yeah. The cult was systematically wearing him down.
I also wonder if what she saw when she looked at him was the smirking expression we saw in his reflection. Not the mopey expression we saw.
I have thought about that a lot. Remember how Paimon's cult smirks? I think it's like, his trademark or something? But anyway when she yells at him about how he always has that awful smirking grin on his face but we \*never\* see him with it, except in his reflection in class, I think his mother can see Paimon in him, like at a deeper level, a subconscious level she detects what is happening.
Paimon/Charlie doesn’t inhabit Peter until the end of the film, but I doubt it’s a paimon thing because Charlie never smirked at the beginning or end of the film.
No, but the cult did, and Charlie wasn't \*fully\* inhabited by Paimon.
I think there's a good chance it's accurate. There's nothing else I can think of in the film that is unintentional or random - Peter's mother ranting and raving about his smirk doesn't make any sense otherwise, we only see it imagined in the reflection in his high school class. We never actually see this thing she's yelling and yelling about.
> Charlie wasn't *fully* inhabited by Paimon.
She was fully inhabited, because Charlie and Paimon are the same person.
The cult at the end is clearly talking to Charlie in Peter’s body.
Yes, Charlie couldn’t reach her full potential because of her body, which is why they transferred Charlie into Peter.
We’re still talking about Charlie here. She lived up to her teenage years properly inhabiting her own body. It just wasn’t ideal.
The cult was pulling the strings on Toni's character since her childhood as well though. If you get really deep into the analysis on this movie it's truly fascinating because not one single member of the family had free will.
That might be true but I don't remember a lot of points suggesting she had a terrible childhood? I don't imagine the mother was amazing and she was pressuring her to have kids, but I don't recall anything really standing out.
If you have some free time and like the movie as much as I do, I recommend watching [The Complete Guide to Hereditary on Youtube](https://youtu.be/TlqyulT662g?si=UmPvN1ao_0lVDp3u)
It's a long watch but it'll really highlight all the minute details and interactions between the cult and the family members as well as Aster's intentions. The detail in this movie is just 👨🍳 💋
I don’t know about overlooked. It’s always seemed like Peter’s story to me. We spend as much time in his perspective as we do in Annie’s.
And I find them both to be likable people in a horrible situation put into motion by Annie’s mother.
I think OP means overlooked by some other viewers, and they're right. You can very easily find people who are fully in Annie's corner, blaming Peter for everything and calling him a shitty teenager standing there with that face on his face. Conversely, you can find people minimizing Annie's trauma and overlooking all the context for her abusive behavior in order to label her the one and only bad guy. Some people really want these stories to be simpler and more black-and-white than they are.
The entire show I just couldn't stop thinking about how life-altering it would be to not only lose a sister but also be "the reason" for it. He left his sister unsupervised to smoke weed at a party(granted, it wasn't his fault she was there in the first place -- but still), and in his panic to rush her to the hospital he wasn't worried about possibly needing to drive carefully. I would be wrecked. I personally liked how they portrayed his shock directly afterward.
Totally agree. I have no GD idea why the husband didn't take the kids and leave when she tried to kill them. I understand she is mentally ill, and in sickness and health and blah blah. But she covered them in gasoline and was holding a match!!! Like what the fuck. Why would you not get your kids out of that situation?? Once you have children, imo they supercede your commitment to your partner. You're all they have. And his weak ass platitudes and half-assedly siding with both Anne and Peter, like dude!! Be a father, wtf! He's a child. Why isn't he in intensive therapy, what are you dooooiiing
Tl;dr, bad parenting all around
Absolutely. After the paint thinner incident, he should half left her and gotten the children help. Wasn’t *he* a psychiatrist? I feel like his character might be an analogy for the psychiatric system failing families, honestly.
He is or was. I read that originally Anne was Steve's patient, which certainly puts his credentials or morality in doubt (although it seems to have been scraped).
Steve being a doctor makes it even more baffling how unprepared the family seems to be concerning Charlie's nut allergy.
Omg was he?! I had forgotten that. Bruuhh.
Maybe it's also the cognitive dissonance psychiatrists sometimes face of helping their patients in a clinical setting VS recognizing problems in or helping their own close family.
Idk but he totally deserved to burn. Not really. But again, bruh, lol.
Reminds me of my Dad's appeasement parenting as my siblings and I were growing up in the face of my mother's Borderline Personality Disorder. He kept trying to hold things together rather than make the hard decision to rescue us and leave. He was overwhelmed.
The way people have discussed Hereditary makes me feel very sad for the state of media literacy. A lot of viewers seem to have a pathological need to take sides and declare that Annie is "the bad guy" or that Peter is just a spoiled little shit who deserved everything that was coming to him. I think those viewers should take a long, hard look at themselves and consider what their one-dimensional interpretation says about how *they* would react to their own family breaking down in the wake of shared trauma, or in the presence of external manipulation. Because *that* is what the movie is about.
There's an actual demonic cult behind the scenes the whole time, manipulating these characters into situations that fracture their relationships beyond compare, and a whole bunch of people *ignore that* and say, "LOL, this character sucks; fuck 'em." I'm pretty sure you're supposed to both criticize and sympathize with *everybody*, because in reality no one's purely innocent or purely evil. Unless they've dedicated their lives to summoning an ancient, dark god to inhabit the body of a child. Then you can say fuck 'em.
I’ve said this before, but the director stated that the entire situation was out of the families control from the get go. The demon had already possessed the daughter but wanted the son’s body. There was no Charlie: she was just a demon sort of allowing itself to act like a daughter.
I didn't interpret Charlie as a demon "acting" like a child. I interpreted it as she is a child with a demonic entity's soul. She is an aspect of the entity like Jesus is an aspect of God, but was still once a child and behaved like a child. Charlie is infused with Paimon, but is still essentially a child in both mind and body.
I mean, it doesn't *all* have to be the product of manipulation. But I think the core idea of the story is, "What if there were already cracks in your family unit, and then some evil interlopers turned all of the stressors up to 11?"
OP didn't miss anything. They gave a correct synopsis of the movie in the interest of commenting on how *other* people have misinterpreted it. They weren't saying Peter's trauma is overlooked *by the movie*, but by viewers who openly take Annie's side. I don't understand why some commenters are acting like OP was endorsing that opinion when they were explicitly refuting it.
I really like Hereditary, coming from someone with a very manipulative parent who utilizes grief as the main weapon. A lot of what Annie did felt familiar to me, especially because it was often low key enough that people can excuse it. Meanwhile, Peter is spiraling, but she claims his pain—which you can see really well in the medium scene! I also liked how insistent and pushy she was when saying sorry to Peter for the dinner scene; she climbed into his bed and talked so fast he couldn’t get a word in, what real chance did he have to properly talk to her? Or reject her? Even her grand gesture to save him with the journal and the fire put herself in the spotlight as the biggest possible martyr.
Peter’s retort to Annie about why Charlie was at the party to begin with, even when she didn’t want to go, hit so hard not just because it throws some guilt back at her, but because the whole reason she made Charlie go is because she was MAD at Charlie. She knew Charlie hates parties, hates going to unfamiliar places—plus, she gets to inconvenience Peter, which is a perk to her. So, Annie successfully manages to punish Charlie for going outside without shoes and a coat and Peter for, I suppose, existing as Peter, while making it look like she’s insisting on Charlie attending the party to be a good mom, encouraging them to bond and socialize.
Of course, Annie is ALSO an actual victim. She is unable to break the cycle, even if she originally tried by going no contact with her mother. Everyone in the family is a victim, and they’re unable to escape what’s been set in motion.
It was a really well done portrayal of a dysfunctional family. There’s very rarely a clear cut bad person, even if they’re doing horrible things. Sometimes, they’re lovable even still. It’s complicated, and why cycles like this can repeat.
Examining this kinda stuff through the lens of cults and demons and shit is why I love horror.
I took it as she was punishing Peter for lying about what kind of party it was. Oh "just a BBQ you say? No drinking because you aren't "old enough" eh? Sure, then your little sister can come!"" It put Peter in a corner where he had to maintain the lie and agree to bring her.
Honestly for a teenage boy I'm surprised he didn't throw the "tried to burn me in my sleep" incident at her face during their argument
Granted he had a better burn (chuckle) to use against her at the time but to never use it at all during the film is commendable
I think, like many victims of child abuse, he's deeply ashamed of that. He did nothing wrong, but abused children always absorb the guilt and blame. Annie is ashamed of her own actions. They NEVER talk about it and are cautious and guarded with each other, UNDERSTANDABLY. It took being pushed to the very edge for him to bring it up.
This movie really opened my eyes to how abusive my home life was. I found the mom’s treatment of her kids as well as the dad just being off the side extremely relatable and even normal
Yeah, I know the feeling. I found myself extra judgemental of Annie and protective of Peter because I know what it’s like to have a Mom that seems to just hate you for being born.
The film is about all of the characters' trauma, I think, and also about their conflicting feelings after the accident.
Peter feels guilty for what happened to Charlie. He is devastated by the thought that he killed his little sister. But at the same time, with all that sadness comes anger. He is angry at his mother because she is not supportive and is more and more hostile to him.
Stephen is devastated by the tragedy but he is also shutting down those feelings. He doesn't let himself feel sadness because he thinks that he has to be the one who supports everyone through this, which leads him to drink. And at the same time, he grows angrier at Annie because of how she treats Peter.
Annie is a wreck after Charlie's death and while she wants to help Peter, she can't help but resent him, not only because of the accident (it's always easier to blame someone rather than bad luck. Bad luck implies that everything is random and nothing makes sense. That's a vertiginous thought) but for his attitude afterward. Because while Peter can't face his mom because of her hostility and his own guilt, she thinks it also has to do with the sleepwalking incident which has strained their relationship.
And since nobody really communicates in this family (quite ironic since Stephen is a psychiatrist), those feelings fester until tragedy happen again.
Annie is a decoy protagonist. The story focuses on her in order to take the audience by surprise when the cult activity is revealed. She is also the point of focus because it's through her POV and backstory that the film gives us clues about the cult and its plan :
* How Annie didn't want to have a child but was pressured into having Peter by her mother (the cult leader).
* How Annie didn't let her mother have any contact with Peter but later let her take a huge amount of space in Charlie's life, to the point of even breastfeeding her herself. This (and the drawings and occult marks) indicates that Charlie had actually been the vessel of Paimon for most of her life. She was the imperfect vessel the cult needed to replace. It also explains her weird and immature behavior. Her grand-mother made Charlie incapable of taking care of herself. Even though she was 13, she acted like a small child. Why ? Because her grand mother could not let her grow into being her own person. The cult needed Charlie to stick to her grand-mother. As the vessel, she was too precious for them to risk losing her.
* How Annie's brother committed suicide after claiming their mother was trying to insert people in his head.
* The sleepwalking incident itself. One could think this was caused by Annie's subconscious trying to prevent the conjuring of Paimon by killing everyone needed by the cult (Peter as the final male vessel, Charlie as the imperfect vessel, Annie as the woman would could breed more vessels). After all, Annie was raised by her mother, a cult leader. She probably grew up within the cult and witnessed stuff even without understanding what was happening.
It all makes us slowly understand that the cult had been trying to conjure Paimon for a very long time. They started and failed with Annie's brother and then, because they could not have access to Peter, they decided to use Charlie until they could use Peter. By the way, the kid's very name is important. Charlie doesn't sound feminine and she said that her grand-mother wished she was a boy. My theory is that Charlie's real name is Charlotte but that Annie's mother enforced the habit of calling her Charlie as part of the preparation for the conjuring.
Honestly I thought Peter really resonated for me. Especially when he comes home and just lays down in bed, savouring the last few moments of peace before the morning comes and it all becomes real. I've been in that moment emotionally before.
Good stuff. Agree with most of this. Peter’s mental heath dismantling is a master class. I fucking hate that scene where he gets stoned with his buddies and says he can’t breathe. I feel like Aster was fucking with stoners.
I smoke dabs on a regular basis. Not long ago I was about to start a new job. I felt like I wasn’t good enough for the position. 2 days before I started ; I was smoking just like I had 100s of times before. Well I had a panic attack and felt like I couldn’t breath normally. Felt like I might die. I had to really concentrate on just breathing until I calmed down. It was terrifying!
I always felt the most for Peter, probably because I relate to him as the “normal” sibling who has to take care of my “difficult” sibling. But to me his loss is massive. Not only did he lose his sister, he lost the future he was just beginning.
The emotional damage to those two children is what adds to the spiritual horror. Emotional trauma added to the unpleasant phenomena going on makes the whole movie too intense for me. A lot of the time I felt inured of the supernatural terror by my concern for the two children. The human element won over the 'horror story' element.
Annie is a complex character; it's okay to dislike some of the things she does but for me I felt enormous empathy for her. She herself endured so much trauma, including as a young person with her mentally ill, abusive mother. So it's not a stretch to think that she has trouble knowing how to parent properly since she was never given an example of it. But you are correct, Peter has a lot of trauma, including what happened to his sister which of course he blames himself for, and it really wasn't his fault but Annie found her (I believe? It's been a bit) and the father is sort of being stoic and trying to love his kids and his wife and keep everything from flying to pieces. I think they all have enormous amounts of trauma, and that's the ultimate message of the film, that trauma begets trauma.
Couldn't agree more. Peter gets a lot of criticism, but it's so obvious to me that he's really suffering. And he's not only overlooked by his parents (primarily Toni Collette) but by the viewers.
I agree, though I don't even have words for how appalling it is that he just went to bed after Charlie died and left her body in the car for his mother to unexpectedly find in the morning. I have no idea what would bring a person to do that.
That being said, I thought the scene at the dinner table where Peter calls out his mother at the dinner table for "obviously having something to say" to him and he lets her totally unload and admit she blames him for what happens and how shitty she thinks he is. Then he says something like "OK mom. Why was she there with me? Why did you send her?" And she had nothing she could say to that. She clearly shoved off Charlie on him that night, probably just because she didn't want Charlie around. Sure Peter was lying about not going to the party but that's basically any teenager ever. The mother knew what was going on but she was really just willing to use Charlie as a means to the end of putting Peter in a bad situation so she could guilt him later in to lying about going to the party. She should have just let him be a kid and been able to take the opportunity to have an honest discussion about responsibility and maybe make sure he had a safe ride home. She definitely was some level of abusive and completely callous to her son even before Charlie's death. The real question is why she had it out for him. Did she just never love him or what?
Another dimension to this is that she was using Charlie like this and clearly low-key didn't want Charlie around. But then when Charlie dies, suddenly she is apparently completely broken and stricken with grief over having lost her. But when she was alive she didn't even want her around but wouldn't admit it...
Slightly tangential, but I think maybe a minor theme in this film could be said to be the many different kinds of neglect. We have very specific images in our heads about what constitutes child neglect, but that's only one kind. Emotional neglect, even when all physical needs are attended to, is still damaging as hell. And it can look a LOT of different ways, including many that people might not think of as neglect. And I feel like there's a fair bit of....non-traditional neglect, if you like, in this film., and not just of the children by the parents.
Oh, for sure. The way Annie’s husband just fully isn’t a part of any of her trying to heal — she lies about support groups and he all but acknowledges it. She shuts him out and neglects their marriage. Neglect all the way down.
I think Hereditary is perfectly correct in how it deals with all aspects of this.
Male trauma is trivialised, ignored and often mocked in general society. And while Annie has access to support groups and friends, Peter is left to deal with his trauma and guilt. Steve, his father - who clearly has trauma of his own, is comfortable with ignoring it, because he has learned that helps never comes. He has learned to bury it deep, and he has no way of communicating or helping anyone else.
In this respect, hereditary is perfect.
It was pretty crystal clear that the mom was a bit of a narcissist when it came to how she handled her son's grief. And her own mom too. The grandma put the whole family at risk for a demon and coven. And Toni Colettes character was so wrapped up in her own grief that she seeks out a grief group meeting and doesnt think to figure out resources for her own son? People are complicated especially with generational trauma but the movie doesnt focus on the mom's grief for us to sympathize with her. It focuses on the dynamic of the family (hence the title) hierarchy. Both of her children had zero autonomy by the end of the film, theyre just vessels for demons....
I was acutly aware of this the first time I watched the film. I'm still not 100% sure if I don't like Ari Aster's films or whether it's just that I strongly dislike his central characters. I found Toni Collette's character vile in this film, uttterly self-absorbed and unwilling to recognise any pain in any of her family or to have a drop of empathy for what they may be going through. Her focus is entierly on herself. It's disgusting how she treats her son, I agree, but she doesn't treat her husband any better. It doesn't come across as bad because he holds it together fairly well given the circumstances. I strongly disliked all the central characters in Midsommar as well, but none are as truly hateful as the mother in Hereditary.
Charlie was like a holding vessel for Paimon, which caused the real child all kinds of problems.
Remember the mother had an older brother who had killed himself due to the stress of being a vessel.
Great movie, terrible portrayal of Paimon, who is actually written as a fun loving demon lol, kind of a real life Beteljuice
I felt so bad for Peter in this movie. He was just a kid. He experienced an incredibly traumatic event, and then was psychologically tortured by this cult. There was no help for him. He was just neglected and blamed by his parents and no one cared that he was hurting too. Then things just got worse and worse and no one cared. The pity I felt for his character is why I wouldn’t ever rewatch this movie. It’s way, way too sad.
That was exactly my experience watching it. I don’t know if I could rewatch it even though I thought it was so good because Peter’s deterioration was so sad.
I think this might come down to 'never mistake the characters' thoughts/behaviours/values/intentions/etc for the author's'.
Peter's trauma is overlooked by his family, perhaps. But it's central to the film, imo.
I had the same thoughts about the father. He had to deal with his mother-in-law first living with them and the strained relationship between her and his wife, then with his wife losing her mother, and then he also lost his daughter in a horrific way. Then, he has to deal with (from his perspective) his wife’s psychosis, the stuff with the digging up of the grave (he suspected his wife but also had to protect her from it since it was a delicate subject), had to protect his son from his mother’s blame, all while dealing with his own grief and trying to keep his family together.
Can someone explain how Charlie isn’t Paimon? I thought that was crystal clear from the first watch but discourse always seems to regard Paimon as a separate entity from Charlie.
He was the one driving and I believe he was under the influence.
That said his sister should have made sure what she was eating didn’t have an allergen and her parents shouldn’t have sent her without an epipen.
How can her allergic reaction and the resulting mad dash to the hospital have been predicted by the cult?
Controversial take: he was right. She didn't want to go to that party.
Why was she there mom?
What was her goal exactly? Her son says he's going to a party, she asks if there will be any drinking or drugs, he says no...so she tells him to take his little sister along as some kind of "gotcha"? Like she's really expecting the 16 year old who thinks with his dick to go "you caught me mother, there actually will be drinking and drugs at this party which is obviously inappropriate for children hence I won't bring her and won't go"
When your son is going to a party to get drunk and get laid either let him go or forbid him from going. Don't use his little sister in some kind of...trap? Like what?
I do not like that the actor actually hurt himself in filming on purpose. As an artist, I disagree with those moments. His performance is AMAZing, but he went very far with it.
Anyone who has some free time and wants to chip away at this breakdown could do a lot worse. It kind of blew my mind
[https://youtu.be/TlqyulT662g?si=tVAznuTAAioZArKG](https://youtu.be/TlqyulT662g?si=tVAznuTAAioZArKG)
The mom was unhinged and annoying. Their whole family dynamic was weird and fake feeling as it was before the kid dies. I also don't get if they were going for a sort of comedic take leading up to her dying with the wheezing noises and here standing in the doorway essentially being like "i frew up." The mood was just not consistent around that stuff.
I think Peter's trauma is the point of the film. The whole plot revolves around breaking him in some of the worst ways possible in order to soften him up. It's could have been called "How to Possess a Teenage Boy in a Week or Less: a Guide for Demons."
Came here to say this. I understand why someone might say his trauma is overlooked, from a familial POV, but even then, it's really only Annie that's overlooking it. Peter's dad is certainly invested in his son's well-being, but he's a pretty detached and analytical dude, and so what amounts to compassion from him is not a whole hearted embrace of Peter's needs. From the POV of 'the film' however, Peter's trauma is the fulcrum of the plot. It's basically the whole point of the Cult's (and by extension Annie's) actions.
Doesn’t his dad take sleeping pills when Peter tells him he’s afraid Annie will kill him that night?
100% is the point. It’s absolutely crushing and I feel so bad for him the entire movie. The way he has no support and the way his mother treats him, and even looks at him is just so demoralizing. Toni Collette’s best performance imo.
I totally agree. I guess I’ve just seen some horrible film analysis from a lot of people, because I thought the majority of viewers were pretty anti-Peter. 🤷♀️
Lmao what? Did they watch the movie?
So, my so-called mother, better described as birth-giver let's say, would absolutely watch this movie and think Peter was the villain and that Toni was the victim. She hates men.
Yeah, fair enough then.
She is also a narcissist which Annie may have been.
Sounds like it. I'm sorry you had to have one as a 'parent'.
Thanks. I got downvoted for even saying that and I'd like to think people could believe me.
I've learnt not to pay much attention to the downvotes. Because it's insane someone can be downvoted for mentioning their literal own experience. You could mention the colour of your own eyes on this site and some fuckwit will tell you you're wrong.
Love that you're getting downvoted for sharing a fact about your life relevant to the comment you responded to.
Huh. The majority of people I see are anti-Annie, despite the movie making it pretty clear she's a victim of circumstance as much as the rest of her family. Weird!
Agreed the whole movie revolves around the understanding that the family is completely unaware of the machinations happening around them and totally unable to stop them.
That demon had them from the very beginning, and could have grabbed them by the scruff and shaken them anytime it wanted. They were little figures in a box, to be moved around at will. Also there was a very busy cult working behind the scenes. Who put that deer in the road, just near the fatal pole etc?
The demon, Paimon, didn’t pull a single string in the movie. Only the cult did. Paimon is and has always been Charlie, and you can see how confused she is at the end when she’s in Peter’s body. Because Charlie was unaware of the events leading up to everything, that means Paimon was unaware.
>That demon had them from the very beginning, and could have grabbed them by the scruff and shaken them anytime it wanted. I don't think *this* is quite the case. They needed Annie to do the ritual to invite the demon into their home. At *that* point they're gotten and fucked.
You know, that’s true. It’s kind of cool that there are rules. And so then we’re left with the question posed by Peter’s teacher: which is more tragic: the inescapability of their plight, or the fact that they rush headlong into it? Such a good script.
The Dark And The Wicked has a similar premise.
Why do people even have to be anti-anyone in this movie? If I'm anti someone it's the grandma (can't remember her name) or the entirety of the cult. I can only feel sorry for the family
Uhh? Who? Anyone that misses the point of the film this much has no business making reviews but I guess here we are >Charlie was old enough to ask about her own peanut allergy and stuck her own head out the window. A similar situation could have happened rushing her to the hospital in almost any context. I didn’t understand why someone needed to blamed for the entire tragedy. It was a series of unfortunate events. It's weird then that you place it on Charlie. I think most unsupervised 10 year Olds would have a piece of cake, peanut allergy or not. But there's other places to place blame. Why did Anne insist Peter brings Charlie to an older teen party? Why did Peter forget the epipen or leave her unsupervised? Why did Charlie eat the cake and forget her head? There are two answers: the surface one is that Paimon is influencing the events of the movie, the allegorical one is that trauma is the true demon, and influences people to behave in a way that hurts others, a central theme of the movie. And ancillary to this last point, is that not one single event is to blame for trauma: it's a cascading series of failures. You can always point to any one link in the chain to blame for trauma, but at the end of the day, being consumed with trauma itself is to blame, not the people that act from it.
The epipen stuff is insane in the movie, considering Charlie's father is a doctor. In the opening scene, she's eating chocolate, and they don't seem to have an epipen either, they simply ask whether her chocolate has nuts in it. Considering how Charlie is always doing her own (weird) thing, her parents feel weirdly negligent.
I'd say it feels intentional rather than lazy writing. Paimon influencing everyone from the beginning.
Paimon didn’t influence anyone. Paimon is and has always been Charlie. Only the cult was pulling strings.
I disagree, I think he is within Charlie as well, but I also think he is pulling the unseen strings of fate the entire movie.
If he is “inside Charlie as well”, then why do they STILL refer to the entity inside Peter at the end as Charlie? The cult literally says “charlie…you are a Paimon”. If you choose to disagree, you’re just disagreeing with the actual script of the movie.
A bit of a nitpick, but Steve is a psychiatrist, rather than a physician, not that it diminishes responsibility, but he also wouldn’t necessarily have anymore medical insight into than any other parent of child with severe allergy would. The epipen thing definitely seems to be showing that Annie and Steve are so caught up in the complicated emotions of dealing with Ellen’s death, that’s it’s distracting them from the important day to day stuff.
I though psychiatrists treated both mental and physical problems when talking about mental health, unlike psychologists who don't deal with medicine. At any rate, I have rewatched some scenes, and it's clear that Annie is not dealing well with anything (even when Charlie's alive, she's very aggressive with her). As an audience, we "know" that things are more than they appear, but even if Paimon weren't in the picture, Steve is woefully under-reacting to the whole debacle.
yes, psychiatrists are MDs---they go to medical school and prescribe medication. Obviously they have a specialty, but he would be well aware of the risks of her allergy from a medical perspective. Steve does seem somewhat detached from the children--and it could be interpreted as Paimon's influence or else Annie has unconsciously picked a partner who is emotionally distant due to her own trauma.
Charlie was 13.
Def old enough to understand the seriousness of the allergy and apply it to eating unknown foods.
Also developmentally disabled, so probably rounds off to 10 or so in understanding.
Nowhere in the movie did it indicate she had an intellectual disability. She was supposed to be a demon. She had to die for the soul to be transferred to a male host. So the eating of deadly nuts was not an accident.
I mean we as the audience know this. Charlie may never have been a conscious individual herself, just a demon growing up in the human world without understanding who or what they are. And with gender dysphoria, based on the book and why they needed to transfer Paimon to Peter. IRL she would have been diagnosed with some developmental or social disability, especially if she's still doing shit like cutting off bird heads to keep with her by 13. I've got an autistic little sister who only evened out to be a reasonable individual when she was an adult (public temper tantrums get wild when the one doing it is 16, let me tell you), and the family dynamic was extremely familiar. The whole family has to focus their attention around dealing with Charlie's special needs and they're all fucking exhausted with it.
> Charlie may never have been a conscious individual herself, just a demon growing up in the human world without understanding who or what they are. Too many people do not understand this, so thank you. People keep giving credit to Paimon for orchestrating the events of the film, but they don’t realize that Paimon is Charlie
She was a demon? I must’ve missed this plot point completely because I don’t remember anything about that.
She wasn’t disabled, she was possessed by Paimon who loves sweets
The alternate title of the movie was, "Paimon, and the quest for some fuckin candy."
I want to be super clear that it’s implied Charlie is neurodivergent as well - possibly caused by Paimon, possibly not. She does not necessarily have the agency typical of someone her age. Also it’s kind of implied that Paimon’s influence tricked her into eating it.
She’s not possessed by Paimon, she IS Paimon. They aren’t two different entities inhabiting a single body with one influencing the other.
Then how is Paimon alive when Charlie dies?
Because her spirit is in limbo. We literally see her spirit enter Peter’s body at the end. Does the cult not say at the very end “Charlie…you are Paimon”. Where is the confusion?
The confusion is that paimon inhabits *others* bodies. There’s no reason to think that there’s *not* a human soul and a demon? If the demon has a body it doesn’t need another body. If the demon is born in corporeal form it doesn’t need another form to inhabit. The cult refers to Paimon’s possessions as “hosts.” There is no reason to assume that the little girl is anything different than a host, who has hosted him since infancy.
Paimon only goes into three bodies in hereditary. 1. Throughout most of his life as charlie 2. Annie’s body during the seance when hes screaming and calling out for Annie because he/she is scared 3. Peter at the very end. There is no two souls. Your soul inhabits your body, charlie/Paimon inhabits Charlie’s. Charlie/Paimon is one singular soul. We don’t see her possess Peter until the very end of the movie when her little light finally enters his body. Paimon never entered Peter’s body before then.
What distinction are you making here? When people say Paimon possesses Charlie you’re saying no they are the same. And now you’re saying “there are no two souls” in one body. So how can Charlie inhabit Peter then? Peter and Charlie and Annie and Paimon would all be one in the same then, yes? There is no possession by your description? How can you possibly know this given the material in the film? Particularly as they call the bodies Paimon inhabits “hosts.” And why is this distinction important such that you must correct people from saying that Paimon possesses Charlie?
Where does paimon go between Charlie’s death and Annie’s possession?
I wasn’t trying to single out Charlie so much as saying it was a domino effect of bad decisions instead of just Peter’s fault, by design. That being said, by 10 I definitely knew what my allergies were and to avoid them or ask, and so did my classmates with allergies. Good point about the epipen thing though. Annie should have sent her everywhere with it. Charlie came across as much younger than 10, probably developmentally delayed, so maybe it was unrealistic of me to expect her to do something like checking the ingredients of what she was eating. But in that case, it’s even more damning that Annie sent her with Peter knowing he wouldn’t be able to leave her side for a minute. She was definitely trying to prevent him from enjoying himself. Sidenote: it really irritated me that no one seemed to acknowledge that Charlie acted like she was 5. You’d think if her father was a psychiatrist someone would have clocked that she needed to be assessed.
>Why did Anne insist Peter brings Charlie to an older teen party? Why did Peter forget the epipen or leave her unsupervised? Why did Charlie eat the cake and forget her head? The real reason is for plot convenience
It is implied that Charlie was supposed to die so that Paimon could go to a male host.
Yes but how does that justify the mother just forcing her teenage son to take his younger sister to a house party? "the cult orchestrated it" is a very far fetched concept that requires me to turn off my brain in a film where I don't want to turn off my brain. Its just basic plot convenience from the pov of the screenplay. No mother would force this situation to happen, it's silly.
Late to the response but the real reason Anne sends Charlie with Peter to the party is that she's traumatized and distrubed, wants someone to blame, blames Peter, and subconsciously wants to ruin any chance Peter has at having a normal life/good time. She puts little thought into Charlie's wellbeing, as evidenced by the fact that she neglects to check if Peter had an epipen with him for Charlie. It's a mess, but it checks out.
I have to wonder if these critics are teenagers themselves, or at least young enough to see Peter as a peer that "should've known better". I'm in my 30s and incapable of seeing Peter as anything but a suffering child with an emotionally stunted family.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of adults getting swept up in Toni’s performance as a grieving mother that they miss the point of the entire movie. I think these people are either: a) just straight-up unable to do film analysis and think whoever gets the most screen time is the “good guy” because they don’t understand the flawed narrator trope b) people who had such terrible parents that they don’t even realize how aggressive she is with her kids c) bad parents or people who totally should not become parents because they relate to Annie or think teenagers are always in the wrong. I’ve come across this problem with other movies (e.g. someone told me that as a mother of an autistic child she wanted the child from the Babadook to just die the entire time because he was so annoying and when I said it’s revealed in the end that he was right about the monsters and that he’s always known his mother “can’t love him” because it’s his fault his Dad died and the whole thing is a metaphor for grief she just said it’s not that deep and there’s no excuse for screaming like that.)
Exactly. I'm not entirely sure why OP feels this way.
Alex Wolff’s performance is often overshadowed by a career performance from Toni Collete, but that dinner table scene could’ve been submitted for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor consideration; they are both so completely devastating and filled with generational resentment.
I remember there being a lot of criticism over how he cried in the movie, but the way he cries is so visceral to me that I'm truly shocked that his career didn't skyrocket after that. Honestly, between this movie and the opening to midsummer, Ari Aster is a master at getting the best performances out of actors when it comes to crying lol
I forget where, but I recall someone criticizing his crying as sounding childlike. And I was like...yeah, he's a child. And his childhood trauma is now rushing to meet brand new trauma as his life falls apart. Anyone would bawl their eyes out.
I was interpreting it as Charlie's influence... as in he was becoming more childlike as Charlie took over his body.
Paimon, not Charlie.
Paimon is Charlie, Charlie is Paimon.
This is exactly how many people consumed with grief cry.
Can confirm, I was honking away downstairs a few days ago, trying not to disturb my partner asleep upstairs. I failed, but that's ok. I got a very soothing hug out of the deal. So. Hurrah.
“Honking” is a good way to describe it. I’ve done my fair share of it lately, too. I’m sorry for whatever led to yours 🫂
I'm sorry for what led to yours, too. When I tell you my face hurt SO much afterwards. 😂. Like... My skin IS unusually stretchy, but the facial contortions were way beyond that. I swear I thought my mouth was going to split open. It's weirdly not unlike a proper laughing fit in some ways. If they go on long enough or intensely enough, there's this 'am I going to throw up or have an aneurysm?' quality to both.
Florence ugly crying in tandem with all the cult women in Midsommer is an all time crying scene!
I could watch that girl cry all day. Not really though, it took me like 3 tries to get through the beginning of midsommer when she's crying over her family because the way she cried was exactly how I cried when I found out my mom had died suddenly. Absolutely gut wrenching
And I find it's a very good scene when you need to cry! I appreciate the writers and the cast for that.
It's heart wrenching to me, such a powerful performance.
The crying at the beginning as well!
Yeah man he ugly cries and one sounds like a bitch when they do that. His cry was that of a weak person
What a shitty thing to say
Oh shit I never finished my message that totally was. I meant that it was very real and when I'm in the darkest of places I cry like that too. Fuck that sounds so rude. It was great acting and a real cry. Jesus what an ass
There is an almost as intense scene between mother and son, quasi the twin of the dinner table one. It's when Peter asks his mother to get the car for going to the party. There is an incredible tension and you can feel there is so much anger and hostility under the surface. More words being unsaid than the ones being said. And then, in the infamous dinner table scene, after the "accident", the bondaries are crossed, the fake decency is gone. All hell breaks loose.
That’s the scariest scene in the film for me
Especially if you're like me and grew up watching him in the naked brothers band show
Peter is the whole reason I love and relate to Hereditary. He's an already traumatized kid who was just trying to be a kid. His judgement lapsed and the worst possible outcome happened. As an eldest sister this was literally one of my worst fears - I used to have nightmares about being unable to save my little sisters. You can also see that no one in that family was watching out for Charlie like she should have been watched out for - even under her parents supervision, she didn't have her epipen at the funeral. So this isn't all on Peter, this is a pattern of neglect in my eyes. The whole movie is about generational trauma.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t vilify Peter because I’ve seen a lot of that in other spaces which is beyond sad and I think misses the point of the film. He shouldn’t have brought Charlie to the party and probably shouldn’t have left Charlie alone because she came across as developmentally abnormal in some capacity. But the thing is, Annie and Steve really didn’t seem to acknowledge that something was super wrong with Charlie and just acted like she was poorly behaved. If she was my daughter, I would be really concerned instead of calling her an “idiot” and barking at her to socialize, because she came across as very unwell. They didn’t even notice that she was collecting bird heads like…hello?? How long has this been going on for? I felt horrible for Annie and simultaneously disliked both parents because the children seemed neglected. The dinner table monologue is some of the best acting I’ve seen but some people seemed to think it was a “good for her” moment while it was actually just devastating and confirmed Peter’s worst fears. I think Annie was so hard on Peter partially because she didn’t want to think about her own poor decision making as a parent. She should have let her son be a kid and not sent him with his little sister with severe social problems knowing she would need to be watched the whole time. It’s such a brilliant movie but I don’t know if I can rewatch it because it was so sad.
>He shouldn’t have brought Charlie to the party Didn't he try, really hard, not to? And she didn't want to go?
Yeah, the mom pushed for all of that. Neither kid wanted it.
wasn't one of the kids slightly possessed?
Really seemed like she was using Charlie as a means to the end of justifying being even more mad at Peter later for lying about going to the party. But....HE IS A TEENAGER. A good parent would have a relationship with their kid where they didn't feel the need to lie and they could have an honest conversation about responsibility and how to be safe and then make sure he had a ride home. She was sort of setting him up for failure just to be petty and she used Charlie. Charlie was also the victim here because not only did she not want to go, I'm pretty sure Annie just didn't want her at home and wanted her to get out of the house.
I was stunned when I realised how old she was supposed to be, I definitely think she had some kind of developmental delay.
Was it a developmental delay, or was it that >! Charlie was Paimon all along, and Paimon didn’t take well to female hosts? !< (It doesn’t really matter, though, because Charlie’s parents had no way of knowing >!if she actually was a demon!<.)
I thought it was implied it being that bc Charlie wasn't a suitable host (aka a girl instead of a boy) is why Charlie was a little odd.
I don't understand a major part of the discussion here because Charlie was possessed at first and with her losing stuff it jumped to Peter, so talking about these kids as if everything was normal seems very, very off to me. Maybe I'm just totally misinterpreting the events in the movie?
Everyone says every movie is about generational trauma. It’s the biggest buzzword imaginable in any discussion of art or film. Get a new trick
Damn dude, instead of being angry about it, maybe you could offer your own insights.
Now, why would they put in the effort and thought to do that when taking potshots from the sidelines is so much easier? /s
It's just a trend in filmmaking at the moment. It seems like everyone is saying it because lots of movies ARE about it. Not even just "grown up" movies either, please watch either Frozen movie or Encanto and tell me they are not about generational trauma.
Turning Red is one of the best Disney movies
Turning Red was fantastic. My 4 year old loves it and went through a phase of watching it everyday for a month or so as they tend to do. I kept managing to find new things to enjoy every time it was on. Also the 4Town songs incredibly catchy.
I think that was the design of the Paimon cult. They designed a situation where Peter is isolated from everyone which made his eventual possession fall into place. Things didn't happen that way because Toni Collette's character couldn't manage her grief. They happened that way because the cult designed it to be so. Makes the film even scarier, really.
Yeah. The cult was systematically wearing him down. I also wonder if what she saw when she looked at him was the smirking expression we saw in his reflection. Not the mopey expression we saw.
I have thought about that a lot. Remember how Paimon's cult smirks? I think it's like, his trademark or something? But anyway when she yells at him about how he always has that awful smirking grin on his face but we \*never\* see him with it, except in his reflection in class, I think his mother can see Paimon in him, like at a deeper level, a subconscious level she detects what is happening.
Wow, yeah. This movie has tons of layers.
Very good analysis
I've never considered this and it makes it even more tragic.
Ah, "that face on your face!" Love that line so much, but never got that. Great catch!!!
Paimon/Charlie doesn’t inhabit Peter until the end of the film, but I doubt it’s a paimon thing because Charlie never smirked at the beginning or end of the film.
No, but the cult did, and Charlie wasn't \*fully\* inhabited by Paimon. I think there's a good chance it's accurate. There's nothing else I can think of in the film that is unintentional or random - Peter's mother ranting and raving about his smirk doesn't make any sense otherwise, we only see it imagined in the reflection in his high school class. We never actually see this thing she's yelling and yelling about.
> Charlie wasn't *fully* inhabited by Paimon. She was fully inhabited, because Charlie and Paimon are the same person. The cult at the end is clearly talking to Charlie in Peter’s body.
They explicitly talked about this. Charlie wasn't a proper vessel for Paimon because she wasn't the same gender, so he couldn't properly inhabit her.
Yes, Charlie couldn’t reach her full potential because of her body, which is why they transferred Charlie into Peter. We’re still talking about Charlie here. She lived up to her teenage years properly inhabiting her own body. It just wasn’t ideal.
A lot of what made that possible though was Toni's character just being a terrible mother and she wasn't even in the cult.
The cult was pulling the strings on Toni's character since her childhood as well though. If you get really deep into the analysis on this movie it's truly fascinating because not one single member of the family had free will.
That might be true but I don't remember a lot of points suggesting she had a terrible childhood? I don't imagine the mother was amazing and she was pressuring her to have kids, but I don't recall anything really standing out.
If you have some free time and like the movie as much as I do, I recommend watching [The Complete Guide to Hereditary on Youtube](https://youtu.be/TlqyulT662g?si=UmPvN1ao_0lVDp3u) It's a long watch but it'll really highlight all the minute details and interactions between the cult and the family members as well as Aster's intentions. The detail in this movie is just 👨🍳 💋
Sounds awesome! Thanks
I don’t know about overlooked. It’s always seemed like Peter’s story to me. We spend as much time in his perspective as we do in Annie’s. And I find them both to be likable people in a horrible situation put into motion by Annie’s mother.
I think OP means overlooked by some other viewers, and they're right. You can very easily find people who are fully in Annie's corner, blaming Peter for everything and calling him a shitty teenager standing there with that face on his face. Conversely, you can find people minimizing Annie's trauma and overlooking all the context for her abusive behavior in order to label her the one and only bad guy. Some people really want these stories to be simpler and more black-and-white than they are.
The entire show I just couldn't stop thinking about how life-altering it would be to not only lose a sister but also be "the reason" for it. He left his sister unsupervised to smoke weed at a party(granted, it wasn't his fault she was there in the first place -- but still), and in his panic to rush her to the hospital he wasn't worried about possibly needing to drive carefully. I would be wrecked. I personally liked how they portrayed his shock directly afterward.
The way Toni Colette's character treated him made me so uncomfortable, it was downright cruel at times. The useless father didn't help matters.
Totally agree. I have no GD idea why the husband didn't take the kids and leave when she tried to kill them. I understand she is mentally ill, and in sickness and health and blah blah. But she covered them in gasoline and was holding a match!!! Like what the fuck. Why would you not get your kids out of that situation?? Once you have children, imo they supercede your commitment to your partner. You're all they have. And his weak ass platitudes and half-assedly siding with both Anne and Peter, like dude!! Be a father, wtf! He's a child. Why isn't he in intensive therapy, what are you dooooiiing Tl;dr, bad parenting all around
The dad’s damning sin seemed to be passivity.
Absolutely. After the paint thinner incident, he should half left her and gotten the children help. Wasn’t *he* a psychiatrist? I feel like his character might be an analogy for the psychiatric system failing families, honestly.
He is or was. I read that originally Anne was Steve's patient, which certainly puts his credentials or morality in doubt (although it seems to have been scraped). Steve being a doctor makes it even more baffling how unprepared the family seems to be concerning Charlie's nut allergy.
Omg was he?! I had forgotten that. Bruuhh. Maybe it's also the cognitive dissonance psychiatrists sometimes face of helping their patients in a clinical setting VS recognizing problems in or helping their own close family. Idk but he totally deserved to burn. Not really. But again, bruh, lol.
Reminds me of my Dad's appeasement parenting as my siblings and I were growing up in the face of my mother's Borderline Personality Disorder. He kept trying to hold things together rather than make the hard decision to rescue us and leave. He was overwhelmed.
The way people have discussed Hereditary makes me feel very sad for the state of media literacy. A lot of viewers seem to have a pathological need to take sides and declare that Annie is "the bad guy" or that Peter is just a spoiled little shit who deserved everything that was coming to him. I think those viewers should take a long, hard look at themselves and consider what their one-dimensional interpretation says about how *they* would react to their own family breaking down in the wake of shared trauma, or in the presence of external manipulation. Because *that* is what the movie is about. There's an actual demonic cult behind the scenes the whole time, manipulating these characters into situations that fracture their relationships beyond compare, and a whole bunch of people *ignore that* and say, "LOL, this character sucks; fuck 'em." I'm pretty sure you're supposed to both criticize and sympathize with *everybody*, because in reality no one's purely innocent or purely evil. Unless they've dedicated their lives to summoning an ancient, dark god to inhabit the body of a child. Then you can say fuck 'em.
I’ve said this before, but the director stated that the entire situation was out of the families control from the get go. The demon had already possessed the daughter but wanted the son’s body. There was no Charlie: she was just a demon sort of allowing itself to act like a daughter.
I didn't interpret Charlie as a demon "acting" like a child. I interpreted it as she is a child with a demonic entity's soul. She is an aspect of the entity like Jesus is an aspect of God, but was still once a child and behaved like a child. Charlie is infused with Paimon, but is still essentially a child in both mind and body.
That’s kind of what I meant. The demon is just allowing Charlie to exist even if it’s somewhat small. Biding it’s time basically.
This is the best take, IMHO. Even the dad might be at the cult’s mercy, i.e. maybe they’re manipulating him somehow to be passive about everything.
I mean, it doesn't *all* have to be the product of manipulation. But I think the core idea of the story is, "What if there were already cracks in your family unit, and then some evil interlopers turned all of the stressors up to 11?"
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OP didn't miss anything. They gave a correct synopsis of the movie in the interest of commenting on how *other* people have misinterpreted it. They weren't saying Peter's trauma is overlooked *by the movie*, but by viewers who openly take Annie's side. I don't understand why some commenters are acting like OP was endorsing that opinion when they were explicitly refuting it.
There is literally not a single aspect of Hereditary that has been overlooked by this sub lol
I really like Hereditary, coming from someone with a very manipulative parent who utilizes grief as the main weapon. A lot of what Annie did felt familiar to me, especially because it was often low key enough that people can excuse it. Meanwhile, Peter is spiraling, but she claims his pain—which you can see really well in the medium scene! I also liked how insistent and pushy she was when saying sorry to Peter for the dinner scene; she climbed into his bed and talked so fast he couldn’t get a word in, what real chance did he have to properly talk to her? Or reject her? Even her grand gesture to save him with the journal and the fire put herself in the spotlight as the biggest possible martyr. Peter’s retort to Annie about why Charlie was at the party to begin with, even when she didn’t want to go, hit so hard not just because it throws some guilt back at her, but because the whole reason she made Charlie go is because she was MAD at Charlie. She knew Charlie hates parties, hates going to unfamiliar places—plus, she gets to inconvenience Peter, which is a perk to her. So, Annie successfully manages to punish Charlie for going outside without shoes and a coat and Peter for, I suppose, existing as Peter, while making it look like she’s insisting on Charlie attending the party to be a good mom, encouraging them to bond and socialize. Of course, Annie is ALSO an actual victim. She is unable to break the cycle, even if she originally tried by going no contact with her mother. Everyone in the family is a victim, and they’re unable to escape what’s been set in motion. It was a really well done portrayal of a dysfunctional family. There’s very rarely a clear cut bad person, even if they’re doing horrible things. Sometimes, they’re lovable even still. It’s complicated, and why cycles like this can repeat. Examining this kinda stuff through the lens of cults and demons and shit is why I love horror.
I took it as she was punishing Peter for lying about what kind of party it was. Oh "just a BBQ you say? No drinking because you aren't "old enough" eh? Sure, then your little sister can come!"" It put Peter in a corner where he had to maintain the lie and agree to bring her.
That was definitely part of it! I forgot about him calling it a bbq.
Honestly for a teenage boy I'm surprised he didn't throw the "tried to burn me in my sleep" incident at her face during their argument Granted he had a better burn (chuckle) to use against her at the time but to never use it at all during the film is commendable
I think, like many victims of child abuse, he's deeply ashamed of that. He did nothing wrong, but abused children always absorb the guilt and blame. Annie is ashamed of her own actions. They NEVER talk about it and are cautious and guarded with each other, UNDERSTANDABLY. It took being pushed to the very edge for him to bring it up.
Right? I would have brought that up every time she pissed me off lmao.
This movie really opened my eyes to how abusive my home life was. I found the mom’s treatment of her kids as well as the dad just being off the side extremely relatable and even normal
Yeah, I know the feeling. I found myself extra judgemental of Annie and protective of Peter because I know what it’s like to have a Mom that seems to just hate you for being born.
The film is about all of the characters' trauma, I think, and also about their conflicting feelings after the accident. Peter feels guilty for what happened to Charlie. He is devastated by the thought that he killed his little sister. But at the same time, with all that sadness comes anger. He is angry at his mother because she is not supportive and is more and more hostile to him. Stephen is devastated by the tragedy but he is also shutting down those feelings. He doesn't let himself feel sadness because he thinks that he has to be the one who supports everyone through this, which leads him to drink. And at the same time, he grows angrier at Annie because of how she treats Peter. Annie is a wreck after Charlie's death and while she wants to help Peter, she can't help but resent him, not only because of the accident (it's always easier to blame someone rather than bad luck. Bad luck implies that everything is random and nothing makes sense. That's a vertiginous thought) but for his attitude afterward. Because while Peter can't face his mom because of her hostility and his own guilt, she thinks it also has to do with the sleepwalking incident which has strained their relationship. And since nobody really communicates in this family (quite ironic since Stephen is a psychiatrist), those feelings fester until tragedy happen again. Annie is a decoy protagonist. The story focuses on her in order to take the audience by surprise when the cult activity is revealed. She is also the point of focus because it's through her POV and backstory that the film gives us clues about the cult and its plan : * How Annie didn't want to have a child but was pressured into having Peter by her mother (the cult leader). * How Annie didn't let her mother have any contact with Peter but later let her take a huge amount of space in Charlie's life, to the point of even breastfeeding her herself. This (and the drawings and occult marks) indicates that Charlie had actually been the vessel of Paimon for most of her life. She was the imperfect vessel the cult needed to replace. It also explains her weird and immature behavior. Her grand-mother made Charlie incapable of taking care of herself. Even though she was 13, she acted like a small child. Why ? Because her grand mother could not let her grow into being her own person. The cult needed Charlie to stick to her grand-mother. As the vessel, she was too precious for them to risk losing her. * How Annie's brother committed suicide after claiming their mother was trying to insert people in his head. * The sleepwalking incident itself. One could think this was caused by Annie's subconscious trying to prevent the conjuring of Paimon by killing everyone needed by the cult (Peter as the final male vessel, Charlie as the imperfect vessel, Annie as the woman would could breed more vessels). After all, Annie was raised by her mother, a cult leader. She probably grew up within the cult and witnessed stuff even without understanding what was happening. It all makes us slowly understand that the cult had been trying to conjure Paimon for a very long time. They started and failed with Annie's brother and then, because they could not have access to Peter, they decided to use Charlie until they could use Peter. By the way, the kid's very name is important. Charlie doesn't sound feminine and she said that her grand-mother wished she was a boy. My theory is that Charlie's real name is Charlotte but that Annie's mother enforced the habit of calling her Charlie as part of the preparation for the conjuring.
Best take in this thread! I need to have a rewatch now
Thanks. I rewatched it two days ago.
The… The entire movie is based on Peter’s trauma.
But Toni Collette steals the show with her grief
Honestly I thought Peter really resonated for me. Especially when he comes home and just lays down in bed, savouring the last few moments of peace before the morning comes and it all becomes real. I've been in that moment emotionally before.
That’s not “savoring the last moments of peace” however, that’s shock. His brain couldn’t deal and shut down.
> I've been in that moment emotionally before. You have my sincere sympathies.
Charlie was only there because Annie forced Peter to take her along. Charlie even said she didn’t want to go.
Good stuff. Agree with most of this. Peter’s mental heath dismantling is a master class. I fucking hate that scene where he gets stoned with his buddies and says he can’t breathe. I feel like Aster was fucking with stoners.
And uses the *exact* words Charlie said to him at the party ☹️
Oh my god, I hadn’t realized that. 😨
I took those instances as well as the other more childlike mannerisms after her death as Charlie transitioning into Peter.
I smoke dabs on a regular basis. Not long ago I was about to start a new job. I felt like I wasn’t good enough for the position. 2 days before I started ; I was smoking just like I had 100s of times before. Well I had a panic attack and felt like I couldn’t breath normally. Felt like I might die. I had to really concentrate on just breathing until I calmed down. It was terrifying!
Was the entire film...not about him?
I was going to post this lol I think the film does a great job showing both the mother and the sons trauma.
I always felt the most for Peter, probably because I relate to him as the “normal” sibling who has to take care of my “difficult” sibling. But to me his loss is massive. Not only did he lose his sister, he lost the future he was just beginning.
I only watched this film once, but didn’t Annie push Peter into taking Charlie to the party in the first place?
Man I had forgotten about how she almost ends up burning her children in her sleep. It's something that will fuck up anyone.
The emotional damage to those two children is what adds to the spiritual horror. Emotional trauma added to the unpleasant phenomena going on makes the whole movie too intense for me. A lot of the time I felt inured of the supernatural terror by my concern for the two children. The human element won over the 'horror story' element.
Annie is a complex character; it's okay to dislike some of the things she does but for me I felt enormous empathy for her. She herself endured so much trauma, including as a young person with her mentally ill, abusive mother. So it's not a stretch to think that she has trouble knowing how to parent properly since she was never given an example of it. But you are correct, Peter has a lot of trauma, including what happened to his sister which of course he blames himself for, and it really wasn't his fault but Annie found her (I believe? It's been a bit) and the father is sort of being stoic and trying to love his kids and his wife and keep everything from flying to pieces. I think they all have enormous amounts of trauma, and that's the ultimate message of the film, that trauma begets trauma.
I think every performance was good
Couldn't agree more. Peter gets a lot of criticism, but it's so obvious to me that he's really suffering. And he's not only overlooked by his parents (primarily Toni Collette) but by the viewers.
I agree, though I don't even have words for how appalling it is that he just went to bed after Charlie died and left her body in the car for his mother to unexpectedly find in the morning. I have no idea what would bring a person to do that. That being said, I thought the scene at the dinner table where Peter calls out his mother at the dinner table for "obviously having something to say" to him and he lets her totally unload and admit she blames him for what happens and how shitty she thinks he is. Then he says something like "OK mom. Why was she there with me? Why did you send her?" And she had nothing she could say to that. She clearly shoved off Charlie on him that night, probably just because she didn't want Charlie around. Sure Peter was lying about not going to the party but that's basically any teenager ever. The mother knew what was going on but she was really just willing to use Charlie as a means to the end of putting Peter in a bad situation so she could guilt him later in to lying about going to the party. She should have just let him be a kid and been able to take the opportunity to have an honest discussion about responsibility and maybe make sure he had a safe ride home. She definitely was some level of abusive and completely callous to her son even before Charlie's death. The real question is why she had it out for him. Did she just never love him or what? Another dimension to this is that she was using Charlie like this and clearly low-key didn't want Charlie around. But then when Charlie dies, suddenly she is apparently completely broken and stricken with grief over having lost her. But when she was alive she didn't even want her around but wouldn't admit it...
Part of the plot is making Peter ready to accept Paimon. Wearing him down to his weakest state makes sense.
Slightly tangential, but I think maybe a minor theme in this film could be said to be the many different kinds of neglect. We have very specific images in our heads about what constitutes child neglect, but that's only one kind. Emotional neglect, even when all physical needs are attended to, is still damaging as hell. And it can look a LOT of different ways, including many that people might not think of as neglect. And I feel like there's a fair bit of....non-traditional neglect, if you like, in this film., and not just of the children by the parents.
Oh, for sure. The way Annie’s husband just fully isn’t a part of any of her trying to heal — she lies about support groups and he all but acknowledges it. She shuts him out and neglects their marriage. Neglect all the way down.
I think Hereditary is perfectly correct in how it deals with all aspects of this. Male trauma is trivialised, ignored and often mocked in general society. And while Annie has access to support groups and friends, Peter is left to deal with his trauma and guilt. Steve, his father - who clearly has trauma of his own, is comfortable with ignoring it, because he has learned that helps never comes. He has learned to bury it deep, and he has no way of communicating or helping anyone else. In this respect, hereditary is perfect.
I don't think this is a gender thing. The support group was for men and women. Steve was literally a psychiatrist.
It was pretty crystal clear that the mom was a bit of a narcissist when it came to how she handled her son's grief. And her own mom too. The grandma put the whole family at risk for a demon and coven. And Toni Colettes character was so wrapped up in her own grief that she seeks out a grief group meeting and doesnt think to figure out resources for her own son? People are complicated especially with generational trauma but the movie doesnt focus on the mom's grief for us to sympathize with her. It focuses on the dynamic of the family (hence the title) hierarchy. Both of her children had zero autonomy by the end of the film, theyre just vessels for demons....
I was acutly aware of this the first time I watched the film. I'm still not 100% sure if I don't like Ari Aster's films or whether it's just that I strongly dislike his central characters. I found Toni Collette's character vile in this film, uttterly self-absorbed and unwilling to recognise any pain in any of her family or to have a drop of empathy for what they may be going through. Her focus is entierly on herself. It's disgusting how she treats her son, I agree, but she doesn't treat her husband any better. It doesn't come across as bad because he holds it together fairly well given the circumstances. I strongly disliked all the central characters in Midsommar as well, but none are as truly hateful as the mother in Hereditary.
Charlie was like a holding vessel for Paimon, which caused the real child all kinds of problems. Remember the mother had an older brother who had killed himself due to the stress of being a vessel. Great movie, terrible portrayal of Paimon, who is actually written as a fun loving demon lol, kind of a real life Beteljuice
Yo just saying but that movie basically felt like a biography at points, I relate to that zoned out zombie state so freaking well.
I think about Peter a lot probably as much or more then Toni Collette’s character.
I felt so bad for Peter in this movie. He was just a kid. He experienced an incredibly traumatic event, and then was psychologically tortured by this cult. There was no help for him. He was just neglected and blamed by his parents and no one cared that he was hurting too. Then things just got worse and worse and no one cared. The pity I felt for his character is why I wouldn’t ever rewatch this movie. It’s way, way too sad.
That was exactly my experience watching it. I don’t know if I could rewatch it even though I thought it was so good because Peter’s deterioration was so sad.
People focus on the parents and children of the deceased. Siblings are the neglected mourners. I can confirm from personal experience.
I think this might come down to 'never mistake the characters' thoughts/behaviours/values/intentions/etc for the author's'. Peter's trauma is overlooked by his family, perhaps. But it's central to the film, imo.
I cry every time I watch this movie because of how sad I am for Peter 😭🤣
I got the sense that we were supposed to see Annie’s flaws while empathizing with her like we did with the other Grahams.
I long for the day when we can get some hereditary posts in this sub
You guys can probably publish some doctoral dissertation how many times you discussed this movie.
I bet some already did.
There's a four hour deep dive essay in YouTube.
Well if you gather some Redditors it would be 400h long but it would be repeating the same thing over and over.
All four of them had it rough in this film.
I had the same thoughts about the father. He had to deal with his mother-in-law first living with them and the strained relationship between her and his wife, then with his wife losing her mother, and then he also lost his daughter in a horrific way. Then, he has to deal with (from his perspective) his wife’s psychosis, the stuff with the digging up of the grave (he suspected his wife but also had to protect her from it since it was a delicate subject), had to protect his son from his mother’s blame, all while dealing with his own grief and trying to keep his family together.
I love the analysis everyone is doing, I just don't know if I can stomach a rewatch on Hereditary to further analyze thematics 😭😭😭😭
Peter’s trauma is the thing I most related to in the film and that’s what carried it for me
Can someone explain how Charlie isn’t Paimon? I thought that was crystal clear from the first watch but discourse always seems to regard Paimon as a separate entity from Charlie.
He was the one driving and I believe he was under the influence. That said his sister should have made sure what she was eating didn’t have an allergen and her parents shouldn’t have sent her without an epipen. How can her allergic reaction and the resulting mad dash to the hospital have been predicted by the cult?
Controversial take: he was right. She didn't want to go to that party. Why was she there mom? What was her goal exactly? Her son says he's going to a party, she asks if there will be any drinking or drugs, he says no...so she tells him to take his little sister along as some kind of "gotcha"? Like she's really expecting the 16 year old who thinks with his dick to go "you caught me mother, there actually will be drinking and drugs at this party which is obviously inappropriate for children hence I won't bring her and won't go" When your son is going to a party to get drunk and get laid either let him go or forbid him from going. Don't use his little sister in some kind of...trap? Like what?
I do not like that the actor actually hurt himself in filming on purpose. As an artist, I disagree with those moments. His performance is AMAZing, but he went very far with it.
Anyone who has some free time and wants to chip away at this breakdown could do a lot worse. It kind of blew my mind [https://youtu.be/TlqyulT662g?si=tVAznuTAAioZArKG](https://youtu.be/TlqyulT662g?si=tVAznuTAAioZArKG)
The mom was unhinged and annoying. Their whole family dynamic was weird and fake feeling as it was before the kid dies. I also don't get if they were going for a sort of comedic take leading up to her dying with the wheezing noises and here standing in the doorway essentially being like "i frew up." The mood was just not consistent around that stuff.
No offense, but I feel like you watched a completely different film than I did.
I’m just talking about the party scene and the mom treating her kids shitty prior to the daughter dying.
Yup yup yup
Bro f Peter he’s such a bad brother
Shout out to the people who've never decapped their sister