Hereditary Movie Review: Please Divorce Me From This Family, Stat

Here’s the thing with horror movies: 99.9% are complete and utter letdowns. Whenever a movie is hyped as “the scariest thing to ever happen in the history of time!” the odds are that it’s entirely lame and/or completely squanders a solid start.

Speaking of which, I saw Hereditary and it fucking sucked.

It’s a shame, really, because it had all the makings of a really good horror flick. We had:

• Toni Collette!
• Creepy rural setting!
• Fucking weird middle schooler!
• Bizarre recently deceased grandma!
• A treehouse!
• A deep familial history of severe mental illness!

Which, when combined, would be the perfect recipe for horror. And it didn’t even need to veer into the supernatural—it could’ve been a seriously fucked up psychological experience that showed what can happen when aggressive mental illness manifests itself in sensory and auditory hallucinations and complete psychosis. Especially if said insanity was obviously infiltrating multiple members of the same family at the same time, much to the horror of the newly minted matriarch.

And that did seem to be the original plot of the movie, despite a few weird clunky bits. That is, until the end. Alright, let’s dive in.

"Leave it to Meat Cleavers" aka the happiest new family sitcom of all time (A24)

FAMILY TIES
Lining up for the worst family get-together ever is mom Annie (the supreme Toni Collette, who is amazing in this, honestly), dad Steve (the almost-as-supreme Gabriel Byrne), teenage son Peter (Alex Wolff, originally of Nickelodeon fame), creepy AF middle school-aged daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro, from Broadway’s Matilda), and dead grandma (cannot find the name of this actress ANYWHERE). Charlie seems to have some kind of developmental disorder and can’t quite connect—she also has a habit of piecing together random supplies and dead animal parts to make figurines, so, that’s fun. She also clucks her tongue a lot, which starts off as really creepy and then gets really annoying.

Mourn me--or else (A24)

WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE

We start with a supremely cool opener, all things considered, which is a creepy voyage through tiny fucking dollhouses that take us into the actual first scene. I was super intrigued, wondering if we were going to loop back into this at some point (are they all dead?? Did Toni Collette murder her entire family and is now playing out their lives in dollhouses after snapping??) but no, no we don’t. We see the dollhouses a lot, but it’s because Toni Colette’s character, Annie, is a miniature artist and displays them in galleries, which is less of an artisanal talent and more of a fucking terrifying pastime, but whatever.

The once-dolls-now-maybe-humans are getting ready for grandma’s funeral (RIP) which seems to be both a blessing and a curse (mayhap literally) to Annie. She stands at a podium in the funeral home, looking out at the lackluster attendance, and makes a comment about how surprised she is to see so many people. Obviously grieving and in a bad state, she launches into a dialogue of how insane her mother was—secretive, aggressive, controlling, paranoid, and that’s just the start—and how she just doesn’t know how she feels being in her current position. It’s unnerving and deeply sad, and Toni Collette shows once again just why she’s so damn good as an actor.

Back at home, husband Steve gets a call saying that grandma’s grave has been robbed, and then grandma may or may not show up in a dark corner of Annie’s way-too-goddamn-creepy workshop. Was it grandma? Is it grief manifesting itself? Are the seeds of mental illness sprouting? This is layered with a heavy-hinting scene of Annie poking through grandma’s Boxes o’ Belongings, at one point finding a note cryptically, charmingly stating: “Don't hate me. Our sacrifices will pale in the end next to our rewards."

(Hint to any character in a horror movie: if here are boxes of dead loved one’s belongings conveniently hanging around after their death, especially ones with cryptic notes, fucking open them and go through them.)

Luckily she has her not-super-creepy-at-all daughter to turn to for comfort (A24)

Feeling overwhelmed, Annie declines to dig deeper and says she’s going out to see a movie, but instead hightails it to a grief support group. She’s reluctant to join, but ends up telling the group that she used to attend meetings after her severely mentally ill brother killed himself (because there were people inside him or something to that horrifying effect) and her equally as ill father starved himself to death, and how pervasive mental illness has defined her entire family—excluding, maybe, her until this point.

After the meeting she speaks with Joan (the always amazing Ann Dowd) who shares her own tale of horrible tragedy (her son and young grandson drowned recently) and tries to connect with a not-quite-yet-ready Annie. In her supremely unbalanced state, Annie tells Joan about how she used to sleepwalk, and that one pesky time she woke up in her children’s bedroom with a lit match in her hand, having doused all three thoroughly with paint thinner.

And this is where the movie hits its high notes—in these both quietly and not-so-quietly gobsmacking moments where the line between the supernatural and the psychological is nightmarishly toed. During Paint Thinner Gate, was Annie sane? Is she as disturbed as her family? Or was it some sinister force pushing her right to the brink of utter tragedy?

These moments are sprinkled throughout: there are nonsensical words and symbols scratched into the walls (Annie even includes them in her models) that could be Charlie’s inherent weirdness, a sign of mental illness from at least one person in the remaining family, or a supernatural entity attempting to make itself known; Annie and her mother have the same strange symbol on a necklace which could be just an odd fashion choice, or could be a metaphor linking their mental illnesses, or could be a sign of something far darker; Charlie seems to see orbs and lights, and have some kind of strange pull with animals, but we can’t tell if it’s because of her developmental issues, if it’s mental illness manifesting itself, or if some creature from beyond is desperately trying to get her attention; and that’s just the early scenes.

But I digress, back to the plot.

Definitely feeling in control here (A24)

DON’T LOSE YOUR HEAD
Back in the everyday, things are…unravelling. Annie and Steve’s relationship is growing further and further strained; her already-strained relationship with Peter (see: almost setting him on fire that one time) continues to worsen; and more and more weirdness comes out about grandma (including the fact that she desperately wanted Charlie to be a boy and seemingly pushed her into the role, and oh, she used to breastfeed Charlie and how does that even work?).

Charlie herself is going a bit off the deep end, regardless of whether or not dear old granny is involved. She sees more floating orbs; despite her much-addressed nut allergy, she clearly scarfs down a bag of Peanut M&Ms; at one point she spots granny chillin’ in a field with a white nightgown surrounded by flames (like ya do); and then here’s a particularly horrifying scene in which a bird flies into a school window and kills itself, to which Charlie responds by cutting its head off with scissors and using it as the finishing masterpiece to her latest creepy fucking doll. Again, is it supernatural? Is it psychological? It’s fun to guess!

Until the movie’s like “nah, bro.”

The beginning of the end of the plausibility scale starts with Annie insisting Peter take Charlie with him to a party. At face value, it does make sense in a few ways—Annie is overwhelmed and just may want some damn peace and quiet, and Peter does insist numerous times that there will be no alcohol, so Annie may genuinely want Charlie to have some human interaction in an actual social setting. But c’mon, Annie, we know Peter’s gonna go get trashed and high AF, and that no one (including Charlie) wants Charlie even remotely on the premises.

The face of a true party animal (A24)

But to keep the no-partying ruse going, Peter gives in and takes Charlie (never mind the fact that he knows he’s going to then what, get all kinds of fucked up and have to drive his younger sister home later??) and off they go. Upon arrival, Peter makes googly eyes at the classmate he’s been jonesing for, and they go off to smoke…leaving poor, super weird Charlie to flomp about on her own. Charlie does not want to be away from Peter and left on her own (and nor should she be) but Peter’s got ladies and The Marijuana on the brain, so off he goes.

Enter: a chocolate cake filled with deathly walnuts.

Here’s where we really start getting ridiculous. Okay so first things first:

1. Charlie is super allergic to nuts despite us having seen her eating nuts earlier (maybe ghosts playing interference there for whatever reason, idk) and yet her brother leaves her in a kitchen with instructions to eat a homemade cake he definitely didn’t check to see was full of nuts or not
2. Neither Charlie nor Peter, despite the severe allergy, have an EpiPen handy
3. Peter, who’s been painted as a kind and caring brother, again totally leaves his sister around Deadly Food and Strangers so he can go get fucked up despite needing to get them both safely home after
4. Someone in high school was actually baking a cake at a high school party

You can imagine how well this ends.

Charlie comes clamoring into the Cool Kids Marijuana Den a few minutes later to say her throat’s closing up, because OH YEAH she just ate like 15 pounds of walnuts. Again this is a little hard to believe, given the fact that the movie went out of its way earlier to show her eating peanut products while building Frankenstein birds, but okay.

Hey, sorry to break up the drugs and stuff, but I'm fucking dying (A24)

So Charlie’s clearly going into anaphylactic shock and Peter’s like “idk what’s wrong what do you mean you can’t breathe how could this possibly OH THAT’S RIGHT you have a severe nut allergy and we have no EpiPen despite the severe allergy and I’m high AF but gonna have to drive you home now, cool.”

Several people in the theater groaned during this scene, and not for the tension-induced reasons the director was going for.

Peter scoops Charlie up and tosses her into the car, taking off into the…okay, I have no fucking idea where this movie is set. Again I don’t know if it’s just sloppy work on behalf of the crew, or if it’s supposed to add to the insanity angle, but I’m leaning towards the former. At first it seems like the Pacific Northwest, then we’re sort of told it’s New York State, but then it seems vaguely desert-y, especially as Peter and Charlie now careen down what appears to be legit desert roads to get to the nearest hospital, which feels about 73478623844 hours away to the audience.

Now you think okay, clearly something is going to happen—they’re going to crash, or a ghost is gonna show up, or one of them is imagining it—but oh, dear readers, are you in for a fucking surprise. None of those things happen. Instead, Charlie half climbs out the car window to try to get air and the following happens:

• There’s suddenly (!) something in the middle of the road (roadkill? IDFK)
• Peter swerves the car to avoid it (despite it being something minuscule he could run over and be fine with)
• There’s a lamppost with THE NECKLACE SYMBOL on it
• Charlie’s in exactly the right position at exactly the right time and gets her head fucking taken off by the pole

I just.

No.

No to all of this.

It’s so far-fetched, and we’re not even getting into the depths of that just yet. But please, suspend your utter disbelief for a hot second, because the aftermath at least is one hell of a good scene. Peter’s complete and total shock is so well acted, that we went from shouting in the theater to shutting our yaps and being glued to the screen. Alex Wolff is SO good here, and the reaction you viscerally feel. He finally attempts to tell Charlie that everything’s okay, and he slowly drives off, not bothering to look into the backseat for the horror that awaits him.

Play it cool, baby, play it cool (A24)

He gets home, parks, walks upstairs, gets numbly into bed, and goes to sleep—leaving Annie to find the headless body in the morning.

There’s more incredible acting after this, on behalf of Toni Collette, who’s pain you can feel up to your fucking eyeballs. She’s losing her damn mind in grief and trauma, throwing her body around on the floor as her husband tries in vain to comfort and collect her. It’s really, really fucked up, and it’s really, really good.

But we don’t go further down that path in the right way. We take these few incredible acting scenes and shove them in the toilet. How? Let’s see.

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER
There are no consequences (outside of the deeply destructive and damaging emotional ones, of course) for Peter in the aftermath. No questioning of whether or not he was sober, no followup by any law enforcement that we can see, but fine, we’ll suspend disbelief there for the sake of the plot.

Well okay, maybe SOME consequences, as Annie is seemingly blaming Peter for everything and they have a couple of incredibly tense arguments, including the most awkward dinner on the planet where things blow up. In what may or may not be a nightmare, Annie also tells Peter she tried to abort him when she was pregnant (well that’s something!) and she seemingly has doused them both with paint thinner again, but then the next morning they at least acknowledge that they had the abortion discussion? It doesn’t feel like purposefully layered confusion, it feels like a disaster, so god only knows.

Looks just like every single one of my family dinners (A24)

Anyway, Annie goes back to the grief group, and while she doesn’t go inside, she does reconnect with Joan. They begin to bump into each other more regularly, culminating in a defining moment where they run into each other outside of some Michael’s-type store. Joan is ecstatic and brimming with positivity, claiming she met with a medium who allowed her to speak with her dead grandson. Annie is, accordingly, all “what the actual fuck” but Joan convinces her to come by for a cuppa and a casual conversation with the dead.

Annie tags along to Joan’s apartment, which is apparently in some kind of former school (seriously, wtf was that building?) and notes a doormat outside the door with Joanie stitched into it that I can only assume was crafted in 1962. Annie dumbly notes that dearly departed grandma used to make those exact mats and honestly, the hamfisting is fucking ridiculous. The mat may as well have a gigantic fucking print of grandma’s face on it at this point, and the is the first time I’m really pulled out of the movie.

It’s too jarring. Unlike maybe-ghostly words on walls and floating light balls, this is clunky and too much. Clearly there’s some kind of connection to grandma here, and while it could be Annie’s descent into madness (she’s mixing up time! She’s mixing up mother figures!) we’re juxtaposing this with seances, and it’s where things continue to fall apart.

Forget that for now, though, because it’s time to call up some ghosts! There’s a kind of cool scene with Annie and Joan, who sit down at the kitchen table and use a chalkboard and a drinking glass to summon up what may or may not be Joan’s grandson. The spirit (or whatever it may be) seems benign enough, and even Joan’s vaguely hysterical reaction to it seems positive. Hey, anyone that just lost their son and grandson in a horrifying tragedy is going to be elated at being able to connect with their spirits and know that they’re okay.

So can you make your grandson do any other party tricks or...? (A24)

But, like good ol’ grandma’s mat, it feels like it’s too much. It doesn’t feel particularly like Annie’s descent into madness, and it doesn’t particularly feel like an actual supernatural manifestation. Yes, the glass scoots around and it’s all spooky, but the scene feels forced and like the movie is sliding further into its identity crisis. It’s also wrapped up hilariously, with Joan giving Annie some words in a curiously unrecognizable language to read in order to summon up her own maybe-demonic lost family member, and basically says like “eh, no need to know what this says or means, ha ha ha!” She does add that the entire family must be under the same roof in order for this to work properly, whatever that may imply, but sure.

Now we do give Annie a break, because Jesus fuck has she been through a lot recently, but come on, Annie. She of course brings the paper home and, apparently, conjures up Charlie’s spirit offscreen. Okay. Delighted with her foray into the dark arts, she excitedly wakes up her husband and son and drags them downstairs to continue the madness.

Again, this could all be a great manic is-it-madness-or-is-it-horror moment, but it feels like it’s sliding way too deeply into the supernatural. I took it with a grain of salt, vehemently hoping that this was Annie’s psychotic tendencies really coming to the surface, but it just didn’t feel right. Especially when they re-conjure up maybe-Charlie and glasses start skittering everywhere, and they leave her a notebook to doodle in, which is totally not gonna backfire in the slightest.

HI MOM (A24)

There is one really fucking creepy moment, admittedly, when Charlie seemingly possess Annie and—much to everyone’s fucking horror—starts pleading to be taken out of the afterlife because it’s cold and dark and lonely and she’s so alone and afraid. Alex Wolff again displays some serious acting chops, nearly crawling out of his own skin on-camera at it all.

Sensing that things are Not Going Well, Steve finally douses Annie with a glass of water, breaking the spell. Problem is, either that pesky psychosis or that pesky spirit is still around here somewhere.

Diary of the Dead
Remember that wonky notebook that Annie handed out to maybe-Charlie? Yeah, so not only was it creepy to begin with (Charlie used to sketch all sorts of nonsense in there, even the head of that bird she stuck on a doll spike), but now it’s being filled up with ghostly images and god knows what.

But still—and I can't express this enough—it doesn’t feel right. Like yeah, I don’t want anything I can’t see manifesting itself enough to doodle, regardless of whether it’s psychosis or the supernatural, but there's still this overwhelming feeling that the movie's reaching. Some doodles come up of some guy crying, and Annie seems to recognize it as Steve, but honestly, it could’ve been anyone ever in the history of fucking time, because that ghost kid can NOT draw.

Honestly this could've been the entire movie, and I would've called it a horror success (A24)

Meanwhile, Annie starts cheerfully constructing miniature versions of Charlie’s death scene (including a tiny severed head, which is all kinds of fucked up). There are definitely some solid scenes in this movie (including this nightmare of one) but again, the bridges connecting them all seem faulty. We should be incredibly torn between whether or not everything going down is in Annie’s head or not, but it just feels so firmly Team Ghost Story now that it’s hard to put yourself back in the moment.

But if it’s going to be Team Ghost Story, let’s at least have something happen, and at any rate it does. The spirit appears to be growing more and more malevolent, and at one point Annie decides to toss the notebook in the fire and be done with the whole thing—only it’s her sleeve (firmly outside the fire) that starts burning instead of the book (firmly inside the fire).

Is it mania? Is it monsters? Who knows.

Annie skadoodles off to Joan’s to demand answers, but Joan’s not home. What is home is the kickoff to the hilariously awful fucking ending everyone in the theater had to then endure.

So the camera zooms into Joan’s apartment while Annie’s knocking away at the door, and—lmao you’re not gonna fucking believe this—shows some sort of demonic shrine with string and pentagrams and candles and a picture of Peter with his eyes crossed out in the center.

Oooooh boy did people make a scene. There was laughter, there were noises of disbelief, and someone said “what the fuck?? out loud (and for once it wasn’t me).

"No, seriously, WHAT THE FUCK" (A24)

So what on earth are we to make out of this? And why Peter? All the heaviness has been around Charlie's maybe-ghost, and Peter's just been along for the ride. Is maybe-Charlie out for revenge? Is Annie harboring incredibly late-term abortion desires that somehow Joan of all people is picking up? Either Annie’s so horrifically unhinged that her brain is churning out hallucinations for places she can’t even get into, or there’s definitely something demonic at play. Annie clearly believes the latter as she races home to try to figure out how to stop the malevolent maybe-Charlie from killing them all. Now she seemingly doesn’t know about Peter’s role—whatever the fuck that is—but knows time is of the essence.

And time is off the essence indeed, because there’s a headless grandma in the attic. Yeah, you read that right. Annie went home and finally decided to dig into grandma’s boxes o’ horror, and SURPRISE! Grandma was part of the Cult of Paimon, one of the Eight Kings of Hell or what the fuck ever, and guess who else was there! That’s right, Joan! The whole thing’s been a setup from a bunch of crazy old ladies in a crazy fucking cult. Looks like grandma is trying to reap the riches in the afterlife (or whatever the fuck it is) by making sure she can use her family as a vessel for good ol’ Paimon (whatever the fuck that is). Here’s why she was trying to make Charlie a boy—because Paimon is a misogynist and needs a male vessel. Clearly the Charlie thing didn’t work, so looks like we’re on the hunt for a strapping young man. Wonder where we’ll find one of those? No, seriously, Peter is a weenie, this is a real question.

Honestly, I wanted to get up and leave the theater, but morbid curiosity took over. Where was I again? Oh, that’s right, headless grandmas. So somehow Annie then ends up in the attic and here we are, staring at grandma’s headless body below the Paimon & Friends symbol. It is, of course, the same strange symbol that Annie wears around her neck, and that…well, that whole thing with Charlie.

We’re now getting heavy headless happenings, but I have no idea why. Yes, yes it’s all tied into demonic cults, but there’s still no clear indication as to why. And again, this isn’t in a thrilling, can’t-wait-to-see! way, but in a what-the-actual-fuck? way. And I don’t like that way. But here we are, with headless grandma.

Annie catapults downstairs to grab Steve and show him, to which he’s clearly thinking “OH FUCK YOU DUG UP YOUR DEAD MOM” but she’s like “no, no, trust me, I didn’t” and then I think at some point grandmas headless body disappears, leaving only a dust outline (lmao) but whatever.

Steve is freaking the fuck out and all “yeeeeah girl, you crazy” as Annie begs him to help her destroy the diary, thinking that’ll solve all their problems, but when she finally gets him down to the fire and he throws the diary in, BOOM, he goes up in motherfucking flames. It’s kind of funny for a second because you assume Annie is going to be able to put him out, but then yeah, no, he dies.

"Jesus, Steve, you don't need to be so DRAMATIC all the time" (A24)

Annie doesn’t take it particularly well, and shows this by…skittering around on the ceiling? Suddenly she goes from “OMFG” to “sup, I’m a pseudo demon now” and we’re treated to an at-once sublimely horrifying and sublimely hilarious handful of scenes in which she lurks in the ceiling corner of Peter’s bedroom, runs sideways across walls, and leaps about as though filled with helium.

Poor Peter has been knocked out (literally and figuratively) for most of this, as he’d slammed his own face into a bit of a mess in school earlier that day (possession? Sure, why not!) but finally comes to with all the dead relatives and demonic skittering going down.

He runs around madly, because wouldn’t we all, sees his toasty dad (RIP) and eventually ends up in the attic, where headless grandma is back for his viewing pleasure. Oh, and if that isn’t enough, Annie has floated the fuck upstairs and is in the process of sawing her own head off with a piano wire.

Okay what. the. fuck.

What the actual fuck.

Hereditary team, are you drunk? Are you taking The Marijuana like Peter? What the fuck? It’s not scary, it’s not deep, it’s just gratuitous stupidity for gratuitous stupidity’s sake. Yes, I get that you’re going with the headless angle here, but why do you need to do this? What purpose does it serve? And hasn’t Annie suffered enough? Is there really no other way to get this pointless point across?

Then naked people come out of the shadows. I'm fucking serious. Peter’s as “nope” as I am, and fucking flings himself out of the window, seemingly dying when he hits the ground. I tried to follow suit, but only managed to hit the chair in front of me in the theater.

"Head's up everyone! Ha, no, but seriously folks" (A24)

So Peter dies (RIP) but apparently that’s the opening good ‘ol Paimon needs, and into the body he scoots! Then Annie’s headless body floats the fuck downstairs, out the door, and up into the treehouse. Peter makes a clucking noise that Charlie used to make, which confuses the whole situation even more (was she always part Paimon? Is that where the developmental weirdness came from? Or did she and the devil both just have a proclivity for annoying tics?) and climbs up into the treehouse. There are lotsa naked people there, as well as his headless relatives, and Charlie’s head is inexplicably mounted to some horrifying gigantic doll thing.

There’s a voice over of all the wonder in store for them, and some other stuff. They keep calling Peter/Paimon Charlie, because apparently she’s in there too (what? why?) and because I guess there’s sort of three of them in there (although pretty sure Peter is dead dead, not playing house with Charlie and Paimon) it means the Holy Trinity has been destroyed and Paimon now reigns, and we get a hearty “Hail Paimon!” from the sea of naked old people.

THE END.

A Lesson in No
Okay, so I’ve got some questions.

1. Why did grandma so vehemently attempt to make Charlie a boy?

We already know the fucking demon king needs a male vessel, so why attempt to groom a female for it? Isn’t that just going to piss the demon off? And while Annie mentions early on that she cut grandma out of her pregnancy with Peter but reluctantly let her around for Charlie (I mean, it did end in grandma breastfeeding the baby, so I think Annie’s instincts were pretty good there) does that mean the existing male vessel is somehow not good enough for Paimon? Cause Paimon needs a specifically stated “healthy male vessel” and spoiler alert: he ends up in Peter anyway, so a lack of grandma growing up doesn’t seem to have made Peter a less appealing four-wheeler for demons. Why not just focus on Peter and get the ball rolling faster?

2. How the fuck did the cult manipulate Charlie’s death?

First and foremost: are we supposed to believe the cult infiltrated a high school party to bake a walnut-filled cake that Charlie (who had no place at the party to begin with) would eat, thus setting off her allergy and needing her to be rushed to the hospital? Or are we supposed to believe they somehow had insight into said walnut-filled cake's existence and were able to guess that Charlie (who again had no place at the party to begin with) would show up and house a slice?

And are we really supposed to believe that the cult was able to manipulate the space-time continuum to the point that they could ensure something small in the road would be able to upend Peter so much, at such a specific time, that he would drive by the pole in the exact position that Charlie—who had to have her head out of the window in the exact right spot at the exact right time—would hit the pole in the exact right space/time/angle that it would decapitate her?

If that’s not the case, are we even able to believe that there was enough of Paimon out there in the world that they could use that symbol to draw Charlie somehow to the pole for decapitation?

Remember, while at this point the cult’s clearly been playing with Paimon (do I smell a new kid’s cable show?), Annie and co. haven’t yet, so it seems highly unlikely that whatever manifestation of Paimon there is floating around currently is strong enough to make that happen. Paimon is still effectively neutered at that moment, so it doesn’t seem plausible.

3. What’s with the headlessness?

Is it a metaphor for lack of control? Some ongoing attempt at linking mental illness to the horror? Why do they need to be headless? Paimon isn’t headless, so what gives? It clearly doesn’t provide an easier route for possession, either, given that both Annie and Peter were possessed perfectly fine with heads. Is it that they, for reasons unknown, needed three headless bodies for the full possession to work? Didn’t seem to be anywhere in the unholy scriptures, so it seems more gratuitous than anything else.

And there’s nothing in Paimon’s details that I can find that support anything to do with headlessness. In fact, the only references to heads that I’ve found is the heavy ass grand crown that sits jauntily on Paimon’s intact head. So what gives with the distinct lack of heads everywhere else?

4. Why do we need a Charlie Doll Shrine?

Why create the doll if they were just going to get a male vessel all along? Did the cult get bored in those few decades of downtime? Are we all just a figment of Charlie’s fucked up mind? They clearly don’t need it for the possession, so what, is it just for worship? Why not just worship Paimon himself, who’s now prancing about in a shiny new Peter suit? And why are we being forced to look at Charlie’s decapitated head yet again?

5. Why—and how—the fuck is Charlie also in Peter’s body? And does that make an Unholy Trinity?

So Peter may or may not be alive in there (in attempting to figure out wtf was going on, I read numerous other accounts, and it seems to be split as to whether or not Peter survived his plummet from the attic window). Regardless, why is Charlie in Peter’s body? Why isn’t it just Paimon? If Paimon is fully risen, as the cult implies, why would Charlie be in there too? Why would he need her? And if they combine to make an Unholy Trinity, wouldn’t they then battle the Holy Trinity in a cool war? (Not that Charlie or Peter would be ANY help there, but still.) Which leads me to...

6. And how does the possession by one lesser demon (okay, a lieutenant of Lucifer, but still) somehow destroy the Holy fricking Trinity?

Okay, so Paimon’s been conjured up and has a fancy flesh suit. How on EARTH does this then mean that the Holy Trinity has been destroyed? You’re telling me that a demon lower in the demon ranks than Lucifer, purely through his possession of a vessel (which was orchestrated by little old ladies, thankyouverymuch), caused the COMPLETE DESTRUCTION of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit?

Look, I went to Hebrew School so I’m not the world’s authority on the Holy Trinity, but come the fuck on, that’s not even remotely accurate sounding.

Even if we’re supposed to focus on Paimon being one of the Eight Kings of Hell (and really, he’s a sub-prince below Lucifer and the first ranks) it’s hardly likely that ONE of EIGHT ghoulish rulers + one developmentally delayed teenager + one surly teenager = enough to overthrow the Holy Trinity—especially because you need all of the Kings to align just to get anything done. Don’t just slap details together for the sake of funsies if you’re going to try to make something so outlandish work. If there’s anywhere it could work it’s obviously in a horror movie, but damn, guys. Do it right.

7. Why did we completely abandon the entire female-driven direction?

We spent 99% of the movie focused on the inherent horror of motherhood, the tenuous relationships between women, and the fear of assuming the mantle of matriarch...so why the sudden 180 focused solely on the least-assuming male character of the entire movie? Why the insane push for a "healthy male vessel" when every other focal point has been on the women in the family? Why does the patriarchy even have to takeover demonic posessions??

The answer to these questions and others I don’t know, and the director clearly doesn’t know, and no one on the face of this earth knows, because this movie has descended into such an utter train wreck that it’s ruined itself entirely.

Thanks a lot, Team Hereditary. I left with no nightmare fodder other than about the horrible storytelling and shitty plot. Maybe, someday, I’ll find a movie that actually scares me again, but until I do, I bid you all adieu. Keep your heads on tightly, kids, it’s a shitstorm out there.