It Came From The Cineplex: Midsommar

Midsommar was written and directed by Ari Aster. 

Aster previously wrote & directed Hereditary.

It's hard to believe that Midsommar is only Aster's second theatrical film! If I didn't know better, I'd say it's the work of a highly experienced filmmaker with a dozen movies under his belt. He's an amazingly competent talent.

Like Aster's previous film, Midsommar is more unsettling and disturbing than it is scary. In a way that's actually worse. A horror film's frights are quickly forgotten, often by the time you get back from the cineplex. Movies like this stick with you for much longer, as they get under your skin and stay with you for days.

If I had to come up with one complaint about Midsommar, it's that it's a little... predictable. When I watched Hereditary, I literally had no idea where its plot was going. It managed to surprise me at every turn (well, until it fell apart late in the third act). 

Sadly, Midsommar follows the "Outsiders Encounter Creepy Cult" template pretty much to the letter. It features the same basic plot as Witchfinder General, The Blood On Satan's Claw and of course the grandaddy of all evil cult films, The Wicker Man (the original 1973 one, not the Nicolas Cage abomination). There are few if any surprises, as the story unfolds exactly as you expect it to.

That said, it's not completely without merit. It features some wonderful cinematography and amazing performances, especially by Florence Pugh as main character Dani Ardor. She does a great job portraying a young woman who's losing the last vestiges of her old self as she slowly goes insane.

So far the film's grossed a paltry $28 million (worldwide!) against its minuscule $10 million budget. Whoever thought it'd be a good idea to release it in the middle of the crowded summer blockbuster season needs fired, stat. This is most definitely a February or October movie, and would have done much better during those periods. On the other hand, Hereditary was released in June as well, and managed to rack up $79 million, so what do I know?

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD! I'D SUGGEST SEEING THE MOVIE BEFORE READING FURTHER!

The Plot:
Dani Ardor (played by Florence Pugh) is a nervous, emotionally needy college student who's dating Christian Hughes (played by Jack Reynor). Christian's exhausted by the constant drama in Dani's life, and wants to break up with her. His pals Mark (played by Will Poulter), Josh and Pelle urge him to do so. Pelle's from Sweden and invites the guys to come visit his hometown, assuring them they'll meet lots of beautiful women there.

Just as Christian's about to give Dani the heave-ho, she calls him in hysterics. Her bipolar sister killed her parents and herself, leaving Dani alone in the world. Christian then feels obligated to stay with her, mechanically comforting her as she sobs uncontrollably.

Sometime later Dani finds out about the trip to Sweden, and wonders why Christian didn't tell her about it. He reluctantly invites her to come along, which angers Josh and Mark. Pelle's all for it though, telling Dani about his village of Harga and the upcoming Midsommar festival (Houston, we have a title!). He consoles Dani by saying he knows what she's going through, as his parents were killed in a fire when he was a child (Plot Point!).

Cut to the group arriving in Sweden. They drive for several hours, eventually arriving at the remote, tiny village Harga. There they meet Pelle's brother Ingemar, who's brought a young British couple named Simon and Connie to visit. Ingemar offers the group mushrooms, and everyone but Dani eats them and begins tripping. Dani's offered some herbal tea, which causes her to hallucinate. She freaks out and runs into the woods, where she passes out and has a nightmare about her parents

Dani wakes next to Christian, who says she was out for six hours. She says that's not possible, as the sun hasn't moved since she last saw it. Pelle offers a half-hearted explanation that this is normal in such a northern locale. Pelle then shows the group around the small village, explaining their various customs. He says they're lucky they arrived when they did, as the nine day Midsommar Festival only occurs once every ninety years.

Josh, who's writing his thesis on the Harga, spots a yellow triangular building at the edge of the village and asks what's inside. Pelle says "It's not for them," and shows everyone the communal building where they'll be staying. Pelle explains that their lives are divided into four "seasons." From birth to 18 they're considered children, from 18 to 36 they embark on a pilgrimage, 36 to 54 is the "summer" of their lives, and from 54 to 72 they're considered elders. Dani asks what happens after someone reaches age 72, and Pelle jokingly makes the "throat cutting" gesture (another Plot Point!).

Sometime later the group participates in the festivities, sitting in a circle as villagers dance around them. A young woman named Maja playfully kicks Christian and she dances by him, getting his attention. Dani looks on disapprovingly. Pelle asks if she's OK, and Dani admits that it's her birthday, and Christian forgot about it. Later Pelle brings her a piece of cake.

The next day Dani and the others join the villagers for a huge feast. Maja serves Christian a glass of tea, which is noticeably redder than everyone else's (implying she spiked it with her menstrual blood as a love potion!). Two elders, a male and female, are wheeled out to the table as guests of honor.

After the feast everyone gathers under a high cliff. The villagers begin chanting and breathing loudly, as Dani and the others wonder what's going on. Suddenly the two elders hobble to the edge of the cliff. The Elder Woman leaps off, landing on a boulder far below and smashing her face to a pulp. 

The outsiders are shocked and appalled. The Elder Man then jumps as well, but instead of dying instantly he shatters his legs. He moans in agony, and the villagers begin mimicking his cries. One of the villagers carries a massive sledgehammer over to the Elder Man, and smashes his skull flat.

Simon and Connie decide they've had enough and announce they're leaving. A villager named Siv explains to the outsiders that this is a time-honored Harga ritual. She says they feel it's better to end their lives at age 72 rather than grow old and infirm and become a burden on the community.

A visibly upset Dani runs back to her room. Pelle follows and tries to comfort her. She tells him to back off, fearing Christian might walk in. Pelle asks if Christian is really that important to her. Later that night Dani has nightmares about her late family.

The next morning Connie packs her bags and tells Dani she and Simon are leaving. She's furious when a villager tells her that Simon left earlier to buy train tickets, and said he'd send a car for her. She can't understand why he'd leave her alone, and heads out on foot to catch up with him. 

Meanwhile, Josh takes notes on the Harga customs for his thesis. Christian enters and says he's decided to do his thesis about the Harga as well. This angers Josh, who's been working on his project for months. Christian suggests they collaborate, but Josh tells him to get lost.

Inside the village temple, an Elder shows Josh one of their sacred texts. He says all of them were written by inbred villagers, who are considered seers. The most recent text was written by a horribly deformed villager named Ruben, who's the product of incest but is viewed as a seer. Josh asks if he can take photos of the text, but the Elder forbids it.

Elsewhere, Mark wanders around the village and pees on a fallen tree. A Harga named Ulf sees him and flies into a rage. He says for centuries they've buried the ashes of their Elders under the fallen tree. In effect, Mark just pissed on hundreds of years worth of Elders. Mark apologizes, but Ulf's so upset he breaks down in tears, and has to be comforted by the other villagers.

Christian sees Ruben, and asks a villager if incest is accepted in Harga. The villager says it's not frowned upon, but they preserve their gene pool by bringing in new blood from outside (yet another Plot Point!). Just then Christian hears a bloodcurdling scream in the distance, that sounds suspiciously Connie-like. The villagers go about their business as if they didn't hear anything.

A second feast is held, and Mark's uneasy when he sees Ulf glaring at him. Dani asks if anyone's seen Connie, and a Harga man says a villager drove her to the train station earlier that day. A beautiful young Harga girl then beckons to Mark, and leads him away from the feast.

Late that night, Josh sneaks into the temple, determined to snap some photos of the sacred text. He hears a noise and sees what appears to be Mark standing behind him. Suddenly he's clocked in the back of the head with a rock and collapses. Ulf, wearing Mark's face like a mask (!!!!), watches as Josh is dragged away.

The next morning, a villager tells Dani and Christian that their sacred text has been stolen, and Josh and Mark are missing. Christian says he doesn't know anything about it, but is willing to help look for the book.

Dani's invited to a competition, in which she and dozens of other girls will dance around a maypole. The last one standing will be crowned May Queen. Dani begins dancing with the others, who drop out one by one. Dani's given an herbal tea, and finds she can suddenly speak and understand Swedish. After hours of dancing, Dani's the last one left and is crowned May Queen.

Meanwhile, Christian meets with a female Elder who says it's been decided he'll mate with Maja. He's given more drugged tea and led into a building, where a dozen naked women stand around a nude Maja sprawled on the floor. He has sex with Maja, as the women watch and mimic her moans of pleasure.

Dani hears the moaning and marches to the building, where she sees Christian drilling Maja in front of an audience. She runs back to the communal building, where she has a mental breakdown. As she wails and rocks back and forth, the other women join her, until they're all in perfect sync with their new queen.

Meanwhile, Christian finishes up with Maja. He snaps out of his trance, and realizing what he's done, flees the building completely naked. While looking for a place to hide, he discovers Josh's leg sticking up out of a garden. He runs into a shed, where he sees Simon dangling from the ceiling, his still-functioning lungs hanging outside his body (a form of punishment called the "blood eagle"). A panicked Christian exits the shed and runs into a villager, who blows powder in his face. Once again he's drugged and knocked out.

The next day (I guess?), there's another ceremony. Dani sits in a place of honor on a stage, peering out of a massive cloak made of flowers. Several Elders sit on the stage as well. Christian, now completely paralyzed from the drug, is parked in a wheelchair at the foot of the stage.

An Elder announces that per their tradition, nine people must be sacrificed during the Midsommar festival. The nine must consist of two elders, four outsiders, two volunteers from the village, and one chosen by the May Queen. To no one's surprise, Dani picks Christian.

The villagers disembowel a live bear and place Christian— who's unable to move or speak— inside its skin. They then set him on a pyre inside the yellow triangular building. They bring in the corpses of Josh, Mark, Simon and Connie as well. The two villager volunteers enter and sit beside the bodies, as the building's set on fire.

The volunteers scream in pain as they're consumed by flame. The other villagers moan and flail about in imitation of them. We slowly zoom in on Dani, as a terrifying smile spreads across her face. She's finally found a new home and family here, as she loses the last remnants of her sanity.

Thoughts:
• Midsommar had an extremely short production period, premiering barely a year after being filming began. In fact it was greenlit on May 18, 2018, just a month before Aster's previous film Hereditary was premiered on June 8, 2018.

• Ari Aster seems to have a thing for verbal tics. 

In Hereditary the strange & disturbed Charlie character had a habit of making a "tock" noise by clucking her tongue. In Midsommar many of the villagers make a ritualistic sound by rapidly and loudly inhaling and exhaling.

• Is Dani's last name (Ardor) meant as a joke? The word "ardor" means "enthusiasm or passion." That doesn't seem to describe her character, as she's more needy and obsessive than passionate. Maybe it's just a coincidence and doesn't signify  anything.

• Speaking of coincidences— there's a 2003 movie called Midsommar, complete with the same Swedish spelling (!). In it, the main character's named Christian (!!), and has a younger sister who kills herself (!!!). In order to get over the ordeal, his friends take him on a trip to Sweden (!!!!). The group ends up encountering a supernatural presence during a folk festival.

OK, so it's not exactly the same, but there are a suspicious amount of similarities. Did Ari Aster know about the earlier film? Is Midsommar 2019 a stealth remake? Did Aster swipe the idea from the 2003 movie? Or is the whole thing just an amazing coincidence?

• Apropos of nothing, two of the stars of Midsommar— Jack Reynor and Will Poulter— previously worked together in a film called Glassland. The movie also starred Toni Collette, who turned in a gut-wrenching performance in Aster's Hereditary. 

I was wracking my brain trying to figure out where I'd seen Reynor before. Turns out he starred in 2018's Kin.

• Aster gives the movie a disorienting quality, mostly through the use of night & day. When the outsiders first arrive, they're enjoying the beautiful noonday sun, and are surprised to learn it's 9pm. Pelle explains that's just the way things work at their particular latitude.

Later on though it's clearly nighttime when the characters are sleeping in their bunkhouse, and when Josh is sneaking into the temple. Why, it's almost as if it only gets dark in Harga when the script needs it to!

When the group first approaches the village, Aster ramps up the sense of disorientation by filming the scene upside down. It's a ridiculously simple idea, but it really does give the shot a confusing, off-kilter quality.

• Midsommar features a ton of pretty blatant foreshadowing, much of it in the form of Swedish folk art. In fact the film begins with a panning shot of a tapestry whose imagery literally spells out the entire plot!

There's also a humorous look at a tapestry that shows women how to create a love potion by stirring their pubic hair clippings into a glass of tea (!). Shortly after we see this tapestry, Maja offers Christian a refreshing beverage, and after taking a drink of it he spits out a hair!

We also see a tapestry depicting the May Queen ritual.

Of course at the end of the movie we see the tapestry come to life, as Dani becomes the village's newest May Queen.

• The foreshadowing's not limited to just Swedish tapestries. In Dani's apartment we see a painting of a little girl taming a ferocious bear.

Later in the village, the outsiders walk past a live bear in a cage.

 Of course the bear's significance becomes apparent at the end, when its body's hollowed out and Christian's placed inside it as part of the sacrifice ritual.

• When they first arrive in Harga, Pelle tells Dani and the others that the Midsommar Festival happens once every ninety years. That's clearly not true though, as Dani finds a wall filled with dozens of photos of past May Queens. How could there be that many if they're only crowned once a century (give or take)?

There are a couple of ways to reconcile this seeming goof. Maybe the May Queen ceremony's an annual event, and is separate from the Midsommar Festival. Maybe Pelle's grasp of English isn't perfect, and he meant this is the 90th Festival. Or maybe he's just a big fat liar, who'd say anything to bring in fresh meat for the ritual.

• The trailer features a very quick shot of Reuben, a monstrously deformed inbred Harga villager. If you're expecting to play a major role in the film (as I was), you're in for a let-down. Reuben literally appears for a grand total of ten seconds in the movie. In fact I think there may be more shots of him in the trailer than in the actual film.

• Speaking of Reuben, the village elders consider him some sort of oracle or seer. The elders encourage him to write in the sacred texts, which they then study.

At one point we get a brief shot of one of Reuben's "writings," and it literally looks like a child's finger painting. An Elder explains to a quizzical Josh that Reuben's writings must be pored over and "interpreted."

Hey, Reuben's scribbles look like they make about as much sense as most religious texts!

• Shortly after the outsiders arrive in the village, Simon sees a group of kids singing and chanting. Pelle explains that they're playing a game called "Skin The Fool."

Later after Mark offends the villagers by peeing on their sacred tree, he's abducted and skinned alive. Ulf even wears Mark's face like a mask! At the end of the movie, the empty husk of Mark's body's placed in the yellow temple (with all the other sacrifices) and set on fire.

• Even though the Elders' deaths were heavily telegraphed well in advance, it was still shocking when they both leaped to their deaths as part of the Midsommar festivities.

By the way, if you ever decide to ritualistically end your life at age seventy two by leaping from a cliff, jump off head first. If you jump feet first like the male Elder, you're gonna have a bad time.

• After witnessing the suicides, Dani wants to leave Harga. Pelle tries to comfort her, saying he understands her pain over the loss of her family. He says his parents were killed in a fire when he was a child, so he knows what she's going through.

Based on the events at the end of the movie, it seems likely that Pelle's parents were burned alive in an earlier Festival.

• Dani & Christian are trapped in a remote, isolated village somewhere in Sweden, they've just witnessed a horrifying ritual suicide and several of their friends and acquaintances have gone missing. So it only makes sense for them to drink every strange herbal concoction offered to them by the weirdo villagers!

• Midsommar features a nice bit of symmetry at the beginning and end of the film. Early in the movie, Dani learns that her sister killed herself and their parents. She wails mournfully as Christian halfheartedly holds her, barely interested enough to utter a halfhearted "There, there."

At the end of the film, Dani, who's now been crowned May Queen, sees Christian cheating on her with Maja. She runs to the dorm, where once again she wails mournfully. This time though, her loyal subjects are with her, and they emphasize totally with her. They match her cries until they're all in perfect sync.

This causes Dani to realize that the villagers are now her family, much more so than anyone in the real world ever was, and is the main reason why she loses her mind and becomes one of them.

• Midsommar doesn't quite reach the heights of its predecessor, but it's still a reasonably well-made sophomore effort. What it lack in actual horror it more than makes up for in disturbing and unsettling imagery. Sadly, it's plot is highly predictable, as it's very similar to every "evil cult" movie ever made. Still worth a look though. I give it a B-.

It Came From The Cineplex: Hereditary

Hereditary was written and directed by Ari Aster.

Aster previously wrote and directed several short films you've never heard of. Hereditary is his first theatrical movie.

Hereditary is a pretty impressive debut. I didn't know what to make of it when I first saw it, as it was so disjointed and off-kilter that I wasn't quite sure what I'd just watched. The movie stuck with me though, as I was still thinking about it days after I'd seen it (which rarely if ever happens these days).

It's a very layered film, featuring many scenes that are seemingly unimportant, but become significant the more you think about them.

Thematically it's VERY similar to Rosemary's Baby, and to a lesser extent The VVitch. There're probably many other influences in there as well, that I just don't recognize. Now that I think about it, it definitely feels like three or four movies mashed together into one.

Unfortunately the movie's not the least bit scary, despite what all the promotional material would have you believe. It IS extremely unsettling and disturbing though, which is even better. In fact it's so intense at times that it's actually hard to watch.

Hereditary has a VERY odd story structure, which doesn't completely work. It presents itself as a psychological horror film about a woman's slow descent into madness, and the resulting disintegration of her family. Turns out that's not what the movie's about at all. The REAL plot doesn't actually kick in until the final fifteen minutes!

On the plus side, this bizarre framework kept me guessing all through the movie, as I was trying to figure out where the hell it was headed. On the negative side, this doesn't give the real story the room it needs to breathe and develop, making it feel almost inconsequential. It definitely could have benefited from one more pass at the script.

Credit where credits's due though— Hereditary may not be perfect, but at least it isn't a sequel or remake.

Earlier this year in Australia, the Hereditary trailer was accidentally played before a screening of the kid flick Peter Rabbit. This caused much wailing and pants-wetting, as panicked parents rushed their precious snowflakes out of the theater before their delicate psyches were permanently scarred.

Said an audience member, “It was dreadful. Very quickly you could tell this was not a kid’s film. Parents were yelling at the projectionist to stop, covering their kids’ eyes and ears. A few went out to get a staff member but she was overwhelmed and didn’t really know what to do. Some parents fled the cinema with their kids in tow.”

I love that story...

So far the film's grossed $61 million worldwide against its minuscule $10 million budget, making it a decent box office success.

BIG HONKIN' SPOILERS AHEAD! THIS IS A MOVIE BEST SEEN "COLD!" DO NOT PROCEED UNLESS YOU'VE SEEN IT! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!

The Plot:
Meet the Graham family: Steve (played by Gabriel Byrne), the level headed father, Annie (played by Toni Collette), the unstable artistic mother, teenaged son Peter (played by Alex Wolff) and creepy young daughter Charlie (played by Milly Shapiro). As the film opens, they're preparing for the funeral of Annie's late mother Ellen, the cold and controlling matriarch of the family.

Annie delivers the eulogy at the funeral, suddenly veering off into a bizarre tirade against her mother. During the service, the sullen and distant Charlie clucks her tongue while she draws disturbing pictures in her sketchbook. Steve freaks out when he sees Charlie eating a candy bar, as she has a deadly peanut allergy. She assures him it's nut-free, and chomps solemnly away (PLOT POINT!).

After the funeral, Annie notices Charlie's acting more withdrawn than usual, and assumes she's saddened by her grandmother's death. For some reason, Annie says Ellen always wished Charlie was a boy (PLOT POINT!), which is an odd thing to tell a little girl. Charlie asks who'll take care of her now that her grandmother's dead, which disturbs Annie.

Annie enters her studio, where she creates intricately detailed miniature dioramas. She finishes a piece illustrating her late mother dying in hospice (!). Distracted, she starts going through a box of Ellen's things. She stops when she sees a ghostly vision of her mother in the studio.

The next day, Charlie's sitting in class when a bird flies into the window and dies. At recess, Charlie finds the dead bird, cuts off its head and stuffs it in her pocket. As one does in that situation. She looks up and sees a woman across the street waving at her (PLOT POINT!).

That night, the cemetery informs Steve that Ellen's grave has been desecrated. He decides not to tell Annie about it. Annie says she's going to a movie, but secretly attends a grief counseling support group. She's reluctant to talk at first, but then begins blurting out ever more shocking personal details about her and her family, including the fact that her father and brother killed themselves. She says her mother killed herself as well, likely due to the fact that she had both D.I.D. and dementia.

Charlie begins sleeping in a treehouse in the backyard, where she builds bizarre little figures and sculptures. She tops off one with the bird head she harvested earlier that day. As she admires her work, she sees a strange light pass through the treehouse (PLOT POINT!).

Some time later Peter asks Annie if he can take her car to a party. Annie asks if there'll be drinking there, and he lies and says no. Annie asks him to take his sister Charlie, I guess in an effort to bring her out of her shell. Peter reluctantly agrees to take her. 

At the party, the creepy and withdrawn Charlie clings to Peter's side, cramping his style. He spots a group of teens baking in the kitchen (?) and tells Charlie to go talk with them. Freed from his little sister, he goes upstairs and smokes pot with his crush Bridget and her friends. Charlie grabs a piece of chocolate cake and starts chowing down. Unfortunately the cake contains peanuts, and she begins having an allergic reaction.

Peter spots Charlie choking, and carries her to the car. He speeds to the hospital, telling her to hold on. Unable to breathe, Charlie rolls down the window and sticks her head out. Suddenly Peter sees a deer in the road, and swerves to avoid it. He sideswipes a utility pole, which brutally decapitates Charlie. Holy. Crap.

Peter slams on the brakes and sits in the car for several minutes, refusing to look in the back seat. In shock, he slowly drives home, goes upstairs and crawls into bed. The next morning, Annie announces she's going into town for art supplies, and shrieks when she sees her daughter's headless body sitting in the back seat of the SUV.

Cut to Charlie's funeral, where an inconsolable Annie wails and collapses to the ground. Later Steve looks through Charlie's sketchbook and is horrified by what he sees. Peter has a panic attack at school and shakily rides his bike home.

Later, Annie drives to another grief meeting, but changes her mind and starts to turn around. She's stopped by Joan, a woman from the support group. She hands Annie her phone number and urges her to call any time.

Annie begins sleeping in the treehouse, I guess in an effort to try and be "near" Charlie. Peter hears a clucking noise in his room, and sees a vision of Charlie in the corner.

Several days later, Annie visits Joan at her apartment, and unloads her emotional baggage onto her. She tells Joan she's a sleepwalker, and once doused Peter and Charlie with paint thinner and was about to drop a lit match on them before waking up in the nick of time (!). She says her relationship with her children was never quite the same after that. I can't imagine why.

Annie begins a slow and steady descent into madness, going so far as to build a diorama of accident scene that killed Charlie (!). The family then has a tense and unpleasant dinner, in which Annie finally comes out and blames Peter for Charlie's death. He correctly points out that it was her idea for him to take her in the first place. Annie storms off, as the family slowly disintegrates.

Annie runs into Joan, who breathlessly tells her about a seance she attended. Annie's skeptical, but Joan insists she come back to her place so she can demonstrate. Once there, Joan conjures up the spirit of her late grandson, who moves a cup across a table and draws on a chalkboard. Annie's flabbergasted, and realizes she can use this technique to talk with Charlie. Joan tells her all she has to do is use a personal item belonging to her daughter, recite a few magic words and make sure her entire family's in the house during the seance.

Annie's sanity continues to unravel, as she rushes home and tries the incantation, using Charlie's sketchbook. Later that night, Annie wakes Steve and Peter, telling them both she's contacted Charlie. She drags them out of bed and demonstrates, seemingly becoming possessed by the spirit of her dead daughter. A horrified Steve shakes her out of the trance, as Peter begins sobbing uncontrollably.

The next day, Peter's in class and sees the same mysterious light Charlie saw. He turns his head and sees his reflection in a window, and is disturbed to see it smiling at him. Back home, an unhinged Annie destroys her studio and everything in it.

That night Peter has another vision of Charlie, as two hands reach out from under his bed and choke him. He wakes up to find Annie's sleepwalking and trying to kill him again. She comes to and begs Peter not to tell Steve what she did. She says she accidentally woke something dangerous by trying to contact Charlie, and she's the only one who can stop it.

Annie grabs Charlie's sketchbook and throws it in the fireplace. Unfortunately her arm catches fire at the same time as the book. She fishes the book out of the flame and puts it out, which douses her arm as well. She realizes she can't destroy the sketchbook, and returns to Joan for help. Annie's shocked to see Joan's apartment is decorated with various witchcraft items, along with a photo of Peter inside a ceremonial symbol.

Now that the movie's three-fourths over, the actual plot begins to kick in. Annie returns home and googles the symbol from Joan's apartment. She discovers it's associated with Paimon, a demonic king of Hell. She roots through her late mother's belongings again, and finds photos of her with Joan, proving they were both in the same witchy coven. Apparently the followers of Paimon are attempting to conjure him into a male body, which will bring them vast wealth or something(?).

For some reason, Annie goes up in the attic, which is filled with clouds of flies and a dreadful smell. She roots around and is shocked to find the headless corpse of her late mother (solving the mystery of Ellen's desecrated grave).

At school, Peter's in class when he hears Charlie clucking her tongue. He suddenly becomes possessed, and violently smashes his head against his desk, breaking his nose.

Steve brings Peter home from school. Annie couldn't care less about him, as she tells Steve that her mother's decapitated corpse is in the attic. She shows him the photos of Ellen with Joan, and says she cursed the family when she tried to contact Charlie. Steve doesn't believe a word she says, but goes into the attic to humor her. He sees the body and accuses Annie of digging up her own mother.

Annie tries to get Steve to burn Charlie's sketchbook, but he refuses. She throws it in the fire, even though she knows it'll kill her. For some reason Steve instantly bursts into flame instead of her (?) and dies.

Peter wakes up and wanders through the house, looking for his parents. He finds his father's charred corpse, and sees a vision of his dead grandmother. A possessed Annie begins chasing him, and he runs up into the attic to hide. Annie bashes her head against the attic door, desperately trying to get in.

Inside the attic, Peter sees candles and other witchcraft paraphernalia, along with a photo of himself with the eyes scribbled out. He hears a noise and sees Annie hovering above him, sawing through her neck with a cord while she stares at him.

Suddenly Peter's confronted by the corpses of his family. He leaps out the attic window and dies when he hits the ground. The glowing light enters his body, and he slowly gets up. He sees his mother's headless corpse float into the treehouse (!).

Peter climbs into the treehouse, and sees a coven of naked Paimon worshippers inside. Charlie's decapitated head sits on top of a statue of Paimon. Annie and Ellen's headless bodies bow at each side of the statue. Joan appears, and places a crown on Peter's head, and welcomes him as the resurrected spirit of Paimon.

Thoughts: 
• Doesn't it seem odd that Ellen (the grandmother) is a major character and presence in the film, but dies before it starts?

• The movie opens with a very cool shot, as we see one of Annie's dioramas. Specifically a detailed recreation of the Graham's house.

The camera slowly zooms in toward the house, focusing on a tiny replica of Peter's bedroom.

Suddenly Steve bursts into the room, carrying Peter's suit.

He then wakes up his son, telling him to get ready for the funeral, as the miniature room transitions into the real thing.

The whole scene's done as a single tracking shot, and the switch from the model home to full size house is absolutely seamless. Well done!

I'm assuming the filmmakers didn't include this shot just to show off, and the scene has some symbolic or deep-seated psychological meaning, but I have no idea what it might be.

By the way, the film's peppered with various shots of the treehouse and the exterior of the Graham home, shot with a "tilt shift" camera, which makes them look like miniatures. These shots ad to the film's sense of unease, as the audience is never quite sure if they're looking at a model or the real thing. 

• Speaking of Annie's models, they serve a subtle, psychological purpose in Hereditary (as just about everything in the film does). All through the movie, Annie's fragile mental state is in constant danger of collapsing. As a result of this, she's compelled to make miniature dioramas of the major events in her life, such as the death of her mother. She even makes a model of Charlie's grisly decapitation accident!

Why the hell would she want to do something like that? Because recreating these traumatic scenes is a release for her. Plus building and staging the dioramas gives her a feeling of control over these events she can't change. In effect she's like a god who has power over her tiny world.

It's a pretty cool concept that's flawlessly executed.

• Alex Wolff must have one hell of an agent. Somehow he managed to get top billing in the film, even over Toni Collette, who's the ostensible star. Strange!

• As a general rule, I hate it when a trailer misleads the audience, promising one film and delivering a completely different one. The Hereditary trailer is a prime example of this. It's edited in a way that makes it look like Ellen dies and her spirit begins possessing Charlie. It also implies that Charlie's a major presence throughout the entire movie.

In reality, none of that's true, as Ellen doesn't do any possessing, Charlie shockingly dies at the end of the first act and everything's part of a plot to resurrect Paimon.

Ordinarily I'd be livid at such a deceptive trailer. But Hereditary is a film that works best if you walk in knowing absolutely nothing about it. In this case the misleading trailer actually worked to its advantage.

• Speaking of misdirection: the trailer's edited to make it look like this is a scene of Ellen's funeral. It's actually Charlie's!

In fact if you look at the scene from the actual movie, you can clearly see the mourners are standing over a tiny coffin. One that's just the right size for a headless thirteen year old girl!

• One last thing about the trailer before I finally move on. At one point, Annie says her mother Ellen wouldn't let her breastfeed Charlie, and insisted on doing it herself (which is downright weird). For some reason, Annie even creates a miniature diorama commemorating this bizarre bit of family history. 

There's even a shot of this diorama in the trailer, showing Ellen preparing to nurse Baby Charlie. Note that in the trailer version, Ellen's elderly breasts are mercifully covered by her nightgown.

When this scene appears in the actual film though, Ellen's left breast is most definitely exposed. Obviously there're rules against female nudity in movie trailers, but I guess that goes for DOLL boobs as well.

• During Ellen's eulogy, Annie looks out at the assembled mourners and says, "It's heartening to see so many strange, new faces here today. I know my mom would be very touched. And probably a little suspicious."

This is a brilliant and subtle little detail that doesn't become significant until after you've seen the film and had time to think about it. 

The "strange, new faces" at Ellen's funeral are all her fellow members of the Cult Of Paimon, who've come to pay their respects! Of course Annie's never seen them before, because at this point in the film she has no idea her mom was "Queen" of a cult!

• After Ellen's death, Annie sneaks out of the house and attends a grief counseling meeting. She's too shy and embarrassed to talk at first, so she just sits silently and listens. Then suddenly she starts spewing a torrent of lurid and appalling details about her family, including the fact that her father starved himself to death, her brother hung himself because he thought his mother "put a person in his head," and more.

I'd have given anything if the camera had slowly pulled back from Annie, revealing the other members of the group slowly and discreetly backing away from her in horror and sneaking out of the gym!

• I feel bad saying this about a young girl, but Milly Shapiro, who plays Charlie, is one creepy-ass looking kid. There's something unsettling and... off about her, which I'm sure is just what every awkward adolescent girl wants to hear.

• There's a definite decapitation theme running through this movie. Charlie cuts off a dead bird's head to use in a craft project. Later she's decapitated in a ghastly accident. Annie finds Ellen's headless, rotting corpse in her attic. And finally Annie saws off her own head at the end of the film.

I have no idea what all this means, but it's most definitely a thing in the film.

• I was definitely NOT expecting this movie to kill off a thirteen year old girl in such a brutal and horrific manner, and especially not at the end of the first act. After Charlie's death, I sat in the theater honestly wondering where the hell the story could possibly go from there. 

It was actually a good feeling (well, you know what I mean) not knowing what was going to happen next, as most of the time I can see every single plot point coming from a mile off. 

Now I know how audiences felt in 1960 when they saw Psycho for the first time!

• Charlie's accident scene was masterfully shot and (pardon the expression) executed. The director ratcheted up the tension by showing Charlie panicking as she suffocated in the back seat of the SUV, as Peter desperately tried to get her to the hospital. The audience is so focused on her plight, that we're completely blindsided when she's gruesomely decapitated.

But the scene doesn't stop there! Immediately after Charlie's killed, we see a long shot of the SUV as it screeches to a halt and sits motionless, for what seems like a full minute of screen time. Director Ari Aster holds interminably on the scene, as the audience waits for confirmation that what they think they just saw really happened. 

We then get an extreme closeup of Peter, who stares straight ahead with the realization that his life just changed forever. He then slowly drives home, enters his house, climbs into bed fully clothed and lays there all night, hoping against hope that this is all a ghastly nightmare and he'll wake up any second.

It's a brilliant scene, one that manages to be extremely disturbing and upsetting without containing a single drop of gore. By focusing the camera on Peter and his reaction, Charlie's death becomes much more shocking than if it would if it were actually shown. It's an impressive achievement.

By the way, I've read online comments calling Peter an asshole and a coward for "hiding in bed" and leaving his poor sister's headless body in the back of the SUV all night. Sigh... HE WAS IN SHOCK, you nimrods! He's not a terrible person; he was simply overwhelmed by the situation and had no idea what to do next. His actions actually felt pretty realistic to me, as it seems like something a teen would actually do in such a case.

• As upsetting and disturbing as the accident was, it couldn't hold a candle to Annie's reaction to Charlie's death. She collapses to the floor in unimaginable pain and grief, wailing that she wants to die. The director holds on the shot for an uncomfortably long time, and it was legitimately hard to watch.

Kudos to Toni Collette for turning in such a realistic, raw and fearless performance. In that instant I honestly believed her pain was real.

If Collette doesn't at least get nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, than the Academy might as well just close up shop!

• I knew from the second she opened her mouth that Joan was up to no good, and was secretly manipulating Annie. That said, I did NOT foresee that she was part of a coven attempting to resurrect one of the Kings Of Hell.

• When the Paimon hooey finally started up in the final minutes of the film, I assumed the director pulled it all directly out of his ass. Nope! Turns out Paimon is a real demon! Well, not real, but you know what I mean.

Paimon (sometimes spelled "Paymon") is a king of Hell who commands two hundred legions— half from the Angelic Order and the rest from the Order Of Powers, whatever that is. He usually appears as a man with a woman's face (!), riding a camel and wearing a headdress made of precious stones.

Paimon has knowledge of past and future events (well we ALL have knowledge of past events, don't we?) and will truthfully answer any question asked of him. He can revel hidden treasures (which is why the cult wants to resurrect him so badly), fly and reanimate the dead.

As you can see in the image above, Paimon even has his own logo sacred symbol.

Note that this exact symbol appears all over the movie. Ellen's wearing the symbol on a chain as she lies in her casket, and Annie's seen wearing one just like it when she delivers the eulogy.

So kudos to Ari Aster for googling demons, and reading all about Paimon!

• At one point Annie enters Peter's room and sees he's being eaten alive by ants. She screams and wakes up, as she's been sleepwalking. Peter asks her what she's doing, and she tells him she tried to abort him before he was born. She then wakes up again, but this time in her own bed. 

Yep, it's the old "dream within a dream" trope. I've had plenty of dreams in my life, but I've never, ever, not even once dreamed I was dreaming. In fact I'm confident that NO ONE has ever done this. It's a bit of screenwriting bullsh*t dreamed up by Hollywood, in an effort to trick audiences.

• For the majority of the runtime, it appears that the film is about Annie's slow descent into madness, her fear that she inherited her condition from her mother and may pass it to her son and the disintegration of her family.

Then at literally the last minute, the movie starts up its REAL plot, one which involves cults, witchcraft and demonic possession. 

The switch is so sudden and abrupt you could get whiplash from watching it. And this isn't just a little plot twist, like "the butler did it." Hereditary pretty much starts up a whole new film in its final fifteen minutes.

Unexpected? Sure. Shocking? Absolutely. Well handled? Definitely not. 

Unfortunately the real plot arrives so late that it's never given the room to breathe, or a chance for it to develop. The audience is too exhausted by this point to have to pay attention to ANOTHER plot. I couldn't believe they were troweling on all the Paimon stuff in the final ten minutes, and was sure it was all another of Annie's nightmares, and she'd wake up any second.

It's not that I hated the Paimon ending— in fact I kind of liked it. It was definitely unexpected, which is always a plus in my book. I just wish it had more of a buildup, to give the audience time to properly buy into it.

• There's a lot to unpack in the final ten minutes of the movie, as it goes completely off the rails and deep into "What The Hell?" territory. So much so that it's hard to understand exactly what happened. For the record, here's my take on the ending.

Ellen and her cult were trying to resurrect Paimon for many, many years. She even tried using her son as a vessel for the demon, which prompted him to kill himself because his mother "put voices in his head."

Ellen then wanted Paimon to possess Peter, but Annie put her foot down and wouldn't let her mother near her son. When Charlie was born, Annie relented for some reason and let Ellen have access to her. Ellen then began breastfeeding her own granddaughter, which is just downright wrong.

Somehow Paimon then possessed Charlie, possibly while she was still in the womb. This explains why she was so weird and awkward. Unfortunately this wouldn't do, as Paimon's a male demon and couldn't go around occupying a female body.

I'm not sure if Ellen's death was part of the long-term plan, or it just happened. Either way, Joan then took over for Ellen, gaining Annie's trust and manipulating her while carrying out the plan.

The cult somehow used its power to orchestrate Charlie's gruesome death. We know this because we see the symbol of Paimon carved into the utility pole that decapitates Charlie.

Once Charlie was dead, the cult planned for him to move into Peter's body. But first, Joan told Annie about a seance she performed, in which she contacted her late grandson. She gave Annie a book of magic words to recite, so she could contact Charlie. In reality, the words didn't conjure up Charlie's spirit, but Paimon's! Clever!

Annie's then seemingly possessed by some kind of evil spirit— most likely Paimon— as she crawls around on the ceiling and chases Peter into the attic. She then saws off her own head, which probably isn't physically possible, but whatever.

Annie's headless body floats into the treehouse, where it joins the noggin-less corpse of her mother. Peter kills himself, and is finally possessed by Paimon. He enters the treehouse, where Joan and her fellow cultists place a crown on his head.

Your mileage may vary, but that's how I saw the ending.

Hereditary is an extremely unsettling psychological horror film, filled with disturbing scenes that are genuinely hard to watch and will stick with you long after it's over. It features top notch performances by the entire cast, especially Toni Collette, who deserves an Oscar for her role of a woman slowly going mad. The best thing about the movie is that I literally had no idea what was going to happen next, which is a rarity these days. It flies off the rails in its final minutes though, as it tries to start up an entirely new movie. If you can get past that, you'll probably enjoy it. I give it a B+.