When Grief Becomes a Curse: The Hidden Haunt of Hereditary
When Hereditary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018, whispers of terror rippled through the audience before the end credits even rolled. “The scariest film since The Exorcist,” critics declared — a heavy crown for any debut filmmaker to wear. Yet for writer-director Ari Aster, it wasn’t about crafting another horror spectacle. It was about exposing the rot beneath family bonds, the unspoken legacies passed down through generations, and the inescapable madness that grief can bring.
But what made Hereditary more than a supernatural story was its terrifying realism. Every scream, every silence, every fractured glance between family members carried emotional truth — drawn not only from Aster’s personal grief, but also from the very real experiences of its actors.
The Family That Fell Apart on Screen and Off
At the heart of Hereditary lies the Graham family — Annie (Toni Collette), her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), their teenage son Peter (Alex Wolff), and young daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro). After the death of Annie’s secretive mother, the family begins to unravel as strange occurrences hint at something dark lurking beneath their bloodline.
But while the film spirals into occult horror, its core is painfully human. The real terror isn’t the supernatural cult — it’s the unbearable weight of grief, guilt, and genetic fate.
Toni Collette’s performance as Annie became an instant classic. Her descent from controlled mourning to complete hysteria felt so raw, so unfiltered, that it often made audiences squirm in discomfort. In interviews, Collette admitted she initially hesitated to take the role because of its emotional demands. “It wasn’t just a horror film,” she said. “It was about a mother breaking apart in front of her family — that’s far scarier than any demon.”
Collette’s own life mirrored that exhaustion. Coming off years of doing lighter projects like About a Boy and United States of Tara, she was craving a role that challenged her emotionally — and Hereditary pushed her to the edge. Aster often encouraged improvisation during Annie’s breakdown scenes, capturing her guttural screams in single takes. Those moments weren’t rehearsed — they were lived.
The Son Who Couldn’t Escape the Shadow
Alex Wolff’s portrayal of Peter, the teenage son haunted by guilt after a horrific accident, became one of the film’s emotional anchors. The now-infamous scene — where Peter drives home in shock, after accidentally decapitating his sister Charlie — remains one of the most devastatingly silent moments in modern cinema. Wolff later revealed that shooting that scene left him psychologically shaken for months.
A former child star from The Naked Brothers Band, Wolff had been trying to shed his image as a teen performer. Hereditary became that turning point. He immersed himself so deeply into Peter’s torment that he suffered sleep paralysis and nightmares during filming. In one interview, he confessed, “I wanted to feel every ounce of Peter’s pain, and I did — maybe too much.”
Gabriel Byrne, who played Peter’s father Steve, later admitted that he often checked in on Wolff between takes to make sure he was coping. That real-life concern mirrored their on-screen relationship — a father quietly trying to hold his crumbling family together.
The Unnerving Child and the Symbolism of Innocence Lost
Milly Shapiro’s Charlie became the face of Hereditary’s haunting trailers — that unsettling “click” of her tongue echoing through the dark. Yet Charlie isn’t just the creepy child trope. She represents the inherited curse — both literally, as the vessel for the demon Paimon, and symbolically, as the embodiment of distorted innocence.
In reality, Shapiro, a Broadway talent known for Matilda the Musical, brought an eerie stillness to the role. She has spoken about being intrigued by Charlie’s otherness — her awkwardness, her loneliness, her sense of not belonging even within her family. For Shapiro, who grew up feeling different because of her artistic interests and appearance, Charlie’s detachment wasn’t a performance. It was empathy.
Ari Aster cleverly played on this discomfort, using Charlie’s character to embody the film’s central theme — that trauma, deformity, and darkness can be inherited, reshaped, and passed down without consent.
The Director Who Poured His Grief Into Every Frame
Ari Aster’s journey to Hereditary wasn’t one of overnight success. The film came from a deeply personal place. Aster had lost loved ones and grappled with family trauma, and he wanted to create something that expressed the horror of loss — not through ghosts or jump scares, but through the slow decay of connection.
He described Hereditary as “a family tragedy that turns into a nightmare.” Every visual detail reinforces that theme — from the miniature models Annie builds (representing her futile attempt to control chaos) to the way the camera often hovers above the house, making it look like a dollhouse trapped under glass. Aster used these techniques to suggest that his characters were puppets of fate — manipulated by forces far beyond their understanding.
The claustrophobic cinematography, crafted by Pawel Pogorzelski, gave the film its suffocating dread. The house, with its perfect symmetry and dim glow, feels like a living organism — beautiful yet menacing. Even the score, by Colin Stetson, throbs like a heartbeat under the surface, making the audience physically feel the anxiety of the characters.
The Buzz Before the Fear
Before its release, Hereditary generated enormous buzz thanks to its unnerving trailers. The marketing campaign cleverly disguised the film as a supernatural mystery centered around Charlie, leaving viewers unprepared for her shocking death halfway through. Fan theories flooded Reddit, with some speculating that Charlie was a demonic child, others believing she would be the final survivor.
When audiences realized the film had duped them — that the story was really about Annie’s psychological collapse and Peter’s possession — it became an internet phenomenon. Some viewers called it genius; others walked out of theaters in disgust. But even critics who couldn’t stomach the horror agreed on one thing: Hereditary redefined what modern horror could be.
The Chaos Behind the Craft
Behind the eerie perfection of Hereditary were real creative battles. The film’s original ending was much darker, involving a sequence of Paimon taking full control in a more graphic ritual. Aster trimmed it down to focus on atmosphere rather than shock.
Filming itself took a toll. Toni Collette reportedly asked Aster if she could take breaks between emotional scenes to “breathe again.” Alex Wolff accidentally broke his nose during the classroom scene where Peter slams his face into a desk — Aster kept the take.
The set’s atmosphere was intense but strangely familial. The actors spent hours discussing grief, spirituality, and fear. “It didn’t feel like a horror set,” Collette said. “It felt like therapy — painful therapy.”
A Legacy That Refuses to Die
Years later, Hereditary continues to haunt audiences not just for its scares, but for its truth. Beneath the demon lore and eerie symbols lies a story about inheritance — of trauma, of pain, of identities passed through generations. Ari Aster gave horror its soul back by reminding viewers that the monsters outside are never as terrifying as the ones we inherit within.
And perhaps that’s the real curse — not the demon Paimon, but the invisible weight of the past, quietly clicking its tongue in the dark.