Hereditary Postscript: Remembering The Others
I will compare a horror movie like Hereditary to the similarly psychological/supernatural horror movie The Others (because watching Hereditary delighted me, and led me in my musings, to re-watch The Others) to be able to rationalize why I still hold The Others as my gold standard of horror.
Hereditary is, as viewers have seen it to be, a ācarnival of griefā, the nightmare of death and the supernatural, and above all of that, the triumph of demons and occultism over an imploded family unit that was already doomed to begin with.
Leading Lady: Ā Though the filmās POV shifted from Annie to Peter during the final act, Toni Collette played to a tee the quietly-traumatized daughter/artist whose elders perished in the macabre clutches of mental illness. Ā She also showed us guilt and resentment directed at her two children; the first child of which being the object of her resentment (because she never wanted to become Peterās mother), and at her second child, Charlie, of her guilt for resenting having Peter in the first place. Ā From there she unraveled into fits of rage and grief at the death of a loved one, and the terror in her became the terror in us.
Hapless Dad:Ā We never really find out what the dad does except give honest love to his family and try to protect them from evil.
Spiritual Elements: Ā In Hereditary, the only Catholic rite we see is when the family buries their dead. Ā The rest is taken from demonology and occultism, revolving around Paimon, a spirit name borrowed from actual demonology grimoires. Ā This leads us to the twist and resolution, where viewers may feel shortchanged by the abruptness of pacing, from excellent slow-burn dread, to cheapish horror elements (possessed people scaling walls, garrote-ing themselves, pounding their heads on the attic door).
Twist: It wasnāt really about coming to terms with the death of a loved one or dealing with the haunting of a vengeful spirit, but about a coven of witches summoning Paimon who lived inside one of the children.
Resolution: As such, the film ends in a shock wave/spectacle of naked elders enraptured by the crowning of their incarnate Paimon king, where the movie throws out all semblance of our emotion, just when we were already enjoying brooding over death, despair, and morbidity. Ā But despite my annoyance, I still reveled in the beauty of the first half of the movie and am obviously not over it since Iām writing shit like this.
The Others is the gothic masterpiece of Alejandro Amenabar (whose overwhelming use of heaviness and dread I immediately recalled after seeing Hereditary), similarly portraying an isolated family shrouded in an isolated house, suffering from madness, isolation, and grief, also plagued by supernatural horror. Ā
Leading Lady: Ā Nicole Kidman plays the stately, pious, and austere Grace. Ā Whereas Toni Colletteās madness turned her into a literal mess, Grace remained an otherworldly creature whose despair was veiled in the prettiest little head full of perfect blonde locks (I sound lesbian) and vampiric/angelic elegance. This to me was exceedingly frightening to watch, as beauty confuses you into thinking that everything should be okay, even if it isnāt. Ā But OK other than that, as Grace and Annie play two totally different characters, itās just refreshing to remember this similarly strong performance of a woman who descended into the depths of hopelessness, but whose austere faith made her keep it together for the most part, all in the intense, fearsome portrayal by Nicole Kidman (did she win an Oscar?).Ā Ā
Hapless Dad:Ā Even if the Dad makes an appearance after being lost at war for over a year, he is an enigma wrapped in strange wistfulness and nonsensical wordsĀ āSometimes I bleedā that youād rather he just go away, because he is just too damn sad and creepy even for their world..Ā And then as mysteriously as he comes, he just leaves again... Chilly....
Spiritual Elements: Ā There is no greater subversion of the Catholic faith that I have ever witnessed than the portrayal of it in this movie which makes me believe that The Others is the most frightening movie there is. Sure, satanic movies like Hereditary are frightening for the obvious reasonāportraying evil as triumphant over good. Ā But at least itās rightfully named by the audience as evil. Ā But in The Others, Catholicism is subtly portrayed as a religion of lies. Ā Grace staunchly taught her children about an afterlife where good children went to heaven and bad children went to hell. Ā But in the movie there is no heaven or hell, and by that logicā¦there is no god. Ā There is only the house that they haunt. Ā Also in comparison to the way Paimon is creepy because he exists in actual grimoires, the Book of the Dead they find in The Others was also an actual practice in the Victorian era and I swear when I first found out about postmortem photography because of this movie, I shat my pants.
Twists/Resolution: Ā 1) The three mysterious household helpers turned out to be ghosts returning to the house years after they died of tuberculosis, Lydia becoming mute after she died, because of the shock that she was no longer living 2) Graceās husband was also dead and returned to the house after dying in the war and being a literal lost soul 3) With the help of a living medium, Grace realized she went insane and suffocated her two children with a pillow and then shot herself when she realized what she had done 4) Grace and her family refused to leave the house despite being disturbed by the world of the living, because they really had nowhere else to go.
The clues leading to these revelations were also all there from the beginning just like in Hereditary, but its story never meandered the way Hereditary kind of did. Ā It just kept flowing with coherence, developments, and bone-chilling horror at every turn. Ā Therefore the twists here were way more well-earned, dramatic, and profound. Ā
Frannyās takeaway: Hereditary takes a seat in the Scariest Movies Hall of Fame, but The Others belongs to the Best Movies of all Time Hall of Fame <3