Rewind/Rewatch is a four-part limited series that examines recent films re-released to theaters, exploring how they’ve changed within pop culture and the meanings they carry years later.
In June 2018, I went to an 11 P.M. showing of Ari Aster’s Hereditary, not knowing what to expect. I may have watched the first trailer and heard some good things from when it screened at Sundance, but my first viewing was pretty cold. I’m a horror fan, so there was a huge chance I would see it anyway. With taking in all the imagery the film had to offer (and there’s a lot of it), one of the biggest things I can remember was what happened in that AMC theater right after Colin Stetson’s “Reborn” ended. Everybody was silent; some even had a surprised, perplexed look. Not in a bad way, but mainly to the tune of “What in the hell did I just watch?” ‘Hereditary’ is a film that contains generational family illness, demonic body transference, tacking grief, cults, and multiple beheadings. It’s also where we begin to understand Aster’s view on relationships, parents concerning their children and the layers to that, and his penchant for endings that hint at triumphant while unveiling something darker. The ending to ‘Hereditary’ shouldn’t and doesn’t feel good, but it gives the runway for something being the victor that shouldn’t have.
Aside from the entire cast’s tremendous acting in selling the story’s more personal aspects, the fact that nothing impeded evil from winning made it uncomfortable. ‘Hereditary’ was being re-released for one night only in IMAX, piquing my curiosity about how I would view the film now—especially considering we now have three Aster films. We’ve gotten a sense of his storytelling methods and his stylistic choices. A lot of what jarred me years ago, I didn’t even flinch at this time (still, poor Charlie)—the meditations of how grief or the lack of acknowledgment stuck around more this time. In ‘Hereditary,’ you have a family that experiences two significant losses, and its supernatural essence hangs around like a predator waiting for the right time to strike. The film begins with a funeral that shakes Annie (Toni Collette) because of what she doesn’t know about her mother, Ellen’s (Kathleen Chalfant) history, and the shaky foundation of their relationship. In the group therapy session, you can tell Annie is trying to protect her nuclear family from a history of mental illness. But even she can’t ignore the weirdness of how Charlie (Milly Shapiro) reacts to her grandmother passing away.
Photo Credit: A24
Asher uses death as a jumping-off point for his other films. In ‘Midsommar,’ it’s the murder-suicide of Dani’s (Florence Pugh) sister and parents that propels her to go on a trip to Sweden with her contentious boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) and his friends and confront their relationship. Beau’s mother, Mona (Patti LuPone ), fakes her death to send him off on an extensive journey to uncover where his co-dependency issues originate from. It’s always a macabre device that sets these stories into motion. During the rewatch, I also understood why the classroom scene in Hereditary is so vital to not only this film itself, but Asher’s whole filmography. While Peter (Alex Wolff) is at school, the class discusses Sophocles’s 450–425 BC tragedy, “Women of Trachis,” where the characters are described as “pawns in this horrible, hopeless machine.”
Photo Credit: A24
The inevitability of twisted fate in motion might be the scariest part of these collections of stories because, in Asher’s world, there’s nothing you can do to impede evil’s eventual goal. Annie is too overrun with guilt and sadness to see Joan (Ann Dowd) setting the stage for the eventual downfall of her family and the rise of Paimon. Even though Dani is rid of a toxic relationship, she loses her mind and has a murderous cult as the family she’s been seeking. Beau finally gains independence and is put on a trial, where he perishes anyway. ‘Hereditary’ sets the table for this thematic reoccurrence in Aster’s work—where the world isn’t so sunny and will not clear up anytime soon. This time around, it wasn’t the overt homages to what we would think horror looks like that caught you off guard; it’s still the things we shouldn’t get to see—the glassy stare on Peter’s face after Charlie dies in the car, the guttural scream when Annie finds out what happens to Charlie, and the eventual breakdown of Steve (Gabriel Byrne), who tries to keep it together as much as possible for a family coming apart by the seams. All of it is from a bird’s eye view that you want to look away from in hopes the camera cuts to something else. That is why ‘Hereditary’ still has staying power; it’s too much like the real world, mirroring the pain of loss and the blindspots within it.
Photo Credit: A24
