Hereditary | Key Shots

In this section of our Colossus Movie Guide for Hereditary, we look at the key shots that help us understand the film.

Cast

Annie Graham – Toni Collette
Steve Graham – Gabriel Byrne
Peter Graham – Alex Wolff
Charlie Graham – Milly Shapiro
Ellen Taper Leigh – Kathleen Chalfant
Joan – Ann Dowd
Bridget – Mallory Bechtel
Written by – Ari Aster
Directed by – Ari Aster

Key shots of Hereditary

The presence of spirits

Hereditary opens with a single shot where the camera goes from looking at the treehouse to turning to a miniature of the Graham’s home. Filmmakers will often use handycam/shaky cam to convey the camera is from a character’s perspective. We see this in the Halloween movies when the camera is from the POV of Michael Myers. It’s a different visual aesthetic. Aster doesn’t use something so distinct in Hereditary, instead, he opts for something a bit more subtle and haunting. The opening sequence is an example of this. As the camera moves about the room, it starts to feel perspective-driven. Even though it’s slow and stable and lacking that distinctive shake of a POV shot.

By the end of the movie, we find out that, yes, in this world, the afterlife exists, spirits exist, and spirits are in the Graham home. Armed with that information, it seems safe to argue that the opening sequence and some of the scenes that come after it are purposefully conveying that perspective. Whether it’s the grandma’s spirit, Paimon’s spirit, some unknown observer. The point is the camera has moments of being from the perspective of something inhuman. It adds another layer of creepiness to an already creepy film.

Paimon takes over Peter

The whole goal of the Paimon coven is to place Paimon’s spirit in Peter’s body. And part of that demands the removal of Peter from his body. And it seems there’s a degree of mental preparation that’s needed. Like they have to weaken Peter’s hold over his body to prepare him for possession. That’s one of the reasons for the scene where Joan appears across the street from Peter’s school and does an invocation to expel Peter from his body.

So we first see the schism in Peter after Charlie’s death. He goes home, gets into bed, and there’s this great layered shot where the main image is a close up of him in bed, but there’s a faded shot of him going into his room and getting into bed. It conveys the dissociation he’s feeling after the trauma of his role in Charlie’s face-to-pole meeting.

Later, in school, the spirit of Paimon, in the form of a ring of light, passes through Peter then waits for him in his classroom. There, we see the first contact, where Peter catches his reflection in a window except it’s not him. It’s Paimon as him, smirking. Shortly thereafter, Peter ends up jumping out the window of his attic. The camera lingers on his body. Suddenly, a shadow falls over the body then moves away. This would be Peter’s spirit, finally expelled. Paimon’s spirit, still in the form of light, then arrives and enters the body. Paimon, in control of Peter, then enters the treehouse for the crowning ceremony.

Annie’s breakdown

The more grounded view of Hereditary is a metaphor for struggling with a genetic mental disorder. How such disorders affect the relationship between parent and child, and how they affect the family as a whole. At group therapy, Annie details how he mother has Dissociative Identity Disorder, her father had psychotic depression, and her brother had schizophrenia. She also reveals she had to go to group therapy previously. And how she says it makes it seem like it was court ordered or forced by her family. She even admits to one time sleepwalking and almost setting herself and her children on fire. So she’s struggled with mental illness.

Annie’s arc in Hereditary is essentially going from functional-yet-troubled to having an episode to a full-blown breakdown. And it tears her family apart. On the one hand, the movie does essentially say that all of this is out of her control. Symbolism aside, metaphor aside, the Paimon coven has essentially rigged everything to happen as it does. On the other hand, that seems to suggest, in context of the metaphor, that the Paimon coven is the mental disorder. It’s there, working in the background, whether you realize it or not. The question is, what can be done about it? What responsibility does someone have? Is it just tragedy? Or was there more Annie could have done for herself and thus for her family? it doesn’t make the situation any less tragic. But Hereditary is a cautionary tale about the impact our family history can have on us.

The Paimon covens constant presence

Ellen’s coven has been working for decades to get Paimon into a suitable male host. They tried with Annie’s brother, but took his own life to get out of it. They wanted to use Peter, but Annie, on instinct, wouldn’t let her mom near him. After years of guilting her, Annie relented and let Ellen be around for Charlie’s birth. Sure enough, Ellen used it to put Paimon’s spirit into Charlie’s body. But Paimon wasn’t happy there. So the coven has spent years preparing to unbind Paimon from Charlie and install him in Peter.

Everything we see in the movie is part of their plan. They put some kind of spell on the telephone pole that takes Charlie’s head off. They probably put the deer in the road that cause Peter to swerve near the pole. They dig up Ellen’s body and put it in the attic. The same creepy smiling man who watches Charlie at Ellen’s funeral is the same naked person in the doorway at the end. Joan and other random women hang out outside of the school just to keep an eye on Charlie and Peter. There’s the scene where someone is outside the Graham house, watching Peter. And of course the terrifying shot right before the final sequence where all the coven members surround the house.