Hereditary (2018)

Episode 164, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Craig: Hello and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Craig.

Todd: And I’m Todd.

Craig: And we are still doing some requests this month. And last week after we finished our podcast, Todd kind of ran through the list and I got really excited when he said that our listener Joseph had requested 2018’s Hereditary directed by Ari Aster because I had seen it fairly recently. There was quite a bit of buzz about it, at least here in the States there was. And I had seen it and I really enjoyed it. So I was looking forward to talking about it. Todd, did you know anything about this

Todd: going in? I mean, I had heard of it, just like you. Well, I hadn’t seen it going into it, but I had heard of it. And I had been seeing all of the press that was saying that this is 1 of those really unique horror films that doesn’t come along very often. Like we’ve been getting lately with Get Out and Baba Duke a few years back and it follows and I figured this would be kind of in that same vein of a horror movie that takes a bit of a different approach to the horror. And I   wasn’t disappointed at all in that respect. In fact, I wasn’t disappointed in the movie at all. I thought it was quite Good.

Craig: Good. Yeah, me too. I don’t know how different I would say it is. I just think that it’s really well made. You know, it has shades of movies like The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby, But kind of like those movies, it’s at least as much, if not more of a family drama than it is a horror movie. I mean, there are certainly horror elements in the movie, but a lot of it just is about this family and how they deal with tragedy and trauma. Particularly the mother of the family, her name is Annie and she’s played by   Toni Collette, who I am a huge fan of. I just think that she’s an amazing actress, period. You know, she does comedy amazingly well. She sings, she does television, she does film, she’s done horror. She’s an Australian actress and she started out there doing some comedy and then I think her big break in the States, I mean the films that she did outside of the States did well here as well but I feel like 1 of her first big movies was the sixth sense. She was great in that, and I just think that she does a   brilliant job in this movie. In fact, I was really thinking that maybe she would get some awards buzz for her acting in this film, and she didn’t.

Todd: No, what a shame.

Craig: I don’t know if it’s because of horror genre films don’t typically get a lot of love when it comes to awards and recognition but oh man, she just gives a performance in this film that just blows me away. I was talking about it last night, and I said just the energy that it would take to play her character in this movie. I can’t even imagine mustering that kind of frenetic, frantic energy. She just, she blows me away.

Todd: Yeah, I thought it was in some ways I was also getting the shades of the Babadook in there where again it almost seems to be more of a family drama well half family drama half horror but the woman in there it’s just so raw promotion and her feeling and her breakdown and you just see it just like here too. Like you say, I don’t know as an actor, if I’d be able to muster that kind of strength for take after take and just conjure it up like she clearly can do. And I read that she didn’t   even really want to do any more horror, but it was after reading the script that convinced her, okay, I’ll do this 1. And I’m sure she’s pretty glad she did.

Craig: Yeah, I can only imagine. It’s a really good script. I’m blown away by the fact that this is this director’s first feature film because it’s so well done. At least from my very amateur perspective, it seems so well done. I mean, the cinematography is just beautiful. The suspense is right on point. The score is really, really cool. It just seems like every element was so carefully considered and it really comes together to make what I think is really a really frightening film. And I was excited because from the time that I saw it the first time,   I immediately wanted to turn around and watch it again. Because…

Todd: Really? Yes! Because I finished watching it and I was like, oh god, it was fantastic, but I don’t know if I could make it through this film again. Not because it was boring, but far from it, but I don’t know if I could take it emotionally.

Craig: Right, and I understand that, and I didn’t. It’s not like I turn around and watch it the next day. It’s been a couple months since I saw it the first time at least, if not more. But with the revelations that come at the end, I felt like there was so much. And it’s a long movie. It’s just over 2 hours at 2.07, which is a little bit long for me, but it doesn’t feel long. It moves and you’re invested throughout the entire thing. And I read that the original cut was well over 3 hours, which included   even a lot more family drama. I think they were probably wise to cut it down to about the 2 hour mark. But with the revelations that come at the end, I just thought there’s so much in the first, you know, before those revelations come, there’s so much that hints at them and suggests what’s actually happening that I didn’t catch the first time around. And I was right, watching it the second time around was a whole different experience because I knew what was coming And so I knew what to look for and there are oh my gosh,   you know just foreshadowing galore In this movie, but it’s subtle enough that it doesn’t smack you in the face the first time around so watching it again for a second time, I took more notes over this movie than I have taken over 1 of our podcast movies in forever. And that makes me a little bit nervous because we don’t have time to talk about everything that I wrote down.

Todd: So true.

Craig: But there’s so much foreshadowing and imagery that ends up paying off in the end. You know, I teach literature and it feels literary in that way. You know, There’s foreshadowing, there are themes that are highlighted in various scenes, and I just thought it was

Todd: great. I read that the director, this even though it is his first feature film, he’s done a few shorts, a couple shorts that were pretty well received, and I think he was a student at the American Film Institute and has been writing little screenplays since he was a kid and Said that he has like 10 screenplays already Yeah That he really wants done and even to prepare for for writing this movie before he even wrote it He sat down and wrote detailed biographies and backstories for every single 1 of the characters before he ever sat down   to write the story out. The main actress in the movie who plays Annie said that he is by far the most prepared director that she has ever seen. Like, he came to the set, he had everything, he knew exactly what he wanted. And it shows, to put something like this together, I think you have to be a person that mindset. And in that way, it really reminded me of Hitchcock. He was a guy who felt like the act of shooting the movie was really boring. He felt like most of the creativity and the act of preparing   for the movie and setting up your shot list and your script and getting all that fine-tuned was really where all of the process lied. And then he just kind of hated having to put it on camera.

Craig: Well, I can definitely see that Hitchcock influence. I don’t know if he was directly inspired, but whether or not. You can see it because there is such intricacy of detail, which Hitchcock was kind of known for. The movie is the story of this family. So there’s the mom and the dad. There’s Steve, who’s played by Gabriel Byrne, who is just an amazing actor. He’s been in a bazillion things for decades. Annie, played by Toni Collette, who I’ve already gushed about. Peter is the wife. Peter is the son. I think that he’s probably supposed to be about   17. He’s played by a kid named Alex Wolfe who I haven’t seen in anything else, but he does a really good job in the movie. And then the younger sister, Charlie, who is played by a relative newcomer. I know that she’s continued to work after this, but this was her first feature film. Her name’s Millie Shapiro. And the very opening shot is, well, it’s actually not a shot, It’s screen text. And it’s the obituary for the grandmother, Annie’s mother, who has passed away. We open up with the family preparing for the grandmother’s funeral. And just seriously,   like every shot, like the very first visual shot we get is a view of this tree house through a window. And the tree house becomes important throughout, but just everything is visually stunning. Again, I’m not gonna be able to hit everything, but then we get a shot of the mom’s studio. The mother is an artist and she works in miniatures. So her studio is filled with all of these miniatures of their home and various scenes from their life. And it zooms in, we zoom in on 1 of the miniatures and it zooms in to what turns   out to be the son’s bedroom and all of a sudden, you know, it zooms in on the miniature And then seamlessly that shot becomes the actual son’s bedroom and we see the mom or the dad 1 or the other come and wake up the son to go to the funeral and Just from that very beginning it sets up, you know kind of this symbolic thing that they are, I don’t know, if you haven’t seen this movie and you want to, turn this off. Don’t listen to it. Because there are so many surprises And it’ll spoil it   for you if you haven’t seen it. So turn it off, go watch it, come back, we’ll wait. But it just sets up kind of this motif that they are kind of these like little dolls in a dollhouse that are being observed and moved around by forces outside of themselves and it’s just so seamless and and cool it just Was just blown away from the beginning.

Todd: Well, it is and it’s those 2 images. I think combined You know, you’ve got like you’re saying this sort of dollhouse imagery which sets up these ideas of fate, you know, how much control do we really have or who is really manipulating us? They’re even played like a doll’s house, you know, there are a lot of these family drama type plays that are set up like that. Shoot, you watch a play and it’s really like watching a tableau, right? Right. Wes Anderson, you know, who really makes this his style, where it seems like every shot in   his movies is shot directly through a fourth wall that’s looking in on some very precisely arranged tableau. Yes. This Guy does this throughout the whole movie. In fact, I think the whole thing was built on sound stages so that they could pull out far enough to get that impression. And he moves through the rooms, he slides up and down through the rooms like that. There are times when a shot opens and you could swear you’re looking at a miniature until somebody starts moving around. Even some of the exterior shots, I would swear, are miniatures trying to   pass off as outdoor shots. And I think that’s deliberate, you know? He’s trying to create that constant connection through the whole movie. So you’ve got that aspect of it. But then even just opening up with that all that text on the screen in a column, right, of an obituary. And it didn’t look like it was cut out of a paper. It’s just black, white text on the black screen. You know, when I see stuff like this in front of a movie I usually am like oh god now I’ve got to like hurry up and read all   this before it goes away But you read it and then I mean there’s just so much of it But it again sets up this other thematic element that’s going through this movie and that’s this concept of family It’s just your typical obituary where you were just smacked in the face with this person died and they were survived by this person and this person Widowed and this person died and they’re survived by these and just like a whole lineage is laid out in 1 column on a Piece of paper which Most of the time means nothing to   the rest of us. Like we kind of skim through that. It’s mostly there for the family. But it’s really setting up that we’re gonna get in here and we’re gonna dive into this family and their lineage, their heritage, all this stuff is gonna be a very big part of the movie. And Just those 2 things together at the beginning of the movie are pretty, I think pretty genius. You know?

Craig: Yeah, yeah. I feel like you kind of have to see it more than once to kind of catch some of these things. And not really. I mean, I remember the first time that I watched it thinking that, You know, there were things that set off triggers in my mind, like, oh, that’s interesting. Like, they’re at the grandmother’s funeral, and Annie speaks, the grandmother’s daughter speaks, and she says, it’s nice to see lots of strange, new faces here today. So, you know, it’s a bunch of people that she’s unfamiliar with.

Clip: My mother was a very secretive and private woman. She had private rituals, private friends, private anxieties. It honestly feels like a betrayal just to be standing here talking about her.

Craig: It’s so small and so, you know, you just don’t even think about it. You know, Toni Collette plays it so well, like she’s clearly upset, she’s clearly nervous, this is her mother’s funeral. And so it could be so insignificant but it ends up there’s a reason why strangers there for her

Todd: but at the same sense though it’s also showing us how the family has really mixed feelings about their grandmother and her death She’s kind of admitting some harsh truths when she’s talking to people, but she’s doing it in that semi-polite way at a funeral where you can’t really say anything bad, but it would be silly not to. It’d be silly to sit up there and pretend that she was this great, wonderful person that they all got along with and so she nails that pretty well, you know, the writing is good, the delivery is good, and then   even later when Gabriel Byrne looks in on his son and says, you know, are you doing okay? And he’s just kind of laying in bed and he nods his head and he’s like, are you sad? And his son’s kind of like, mmmmm. I mean, right from the beginning you get this melancholy air of a funeral and what is so true to the family experience that everybody’s gonna have to deal with a funeral and that uncomfortable mixing of gathering, you know? And then this admission here that, grandma was a flawed person, not all of us had a   great relationship with her. It sets up some mystery and some intrigue, yet at the same time, it feels very real, you know? Yes. There are times when you’re not super sad that someone died because you know that they suffered, or if you’re gonna admit it to yourself, you never really had a close relationship with them. So you’re not gonna be bawling tears at their funeral. And it’s just so cool to see that honestly in a film.

Craig: Well, and as it turns out, at least from their perspective, we find out from Annie later that she had a very strained relationship with her mother throughout her entire life. In the later part of her mother’s life, from their perspective at least, she was struggling with her mental health and so they brought her to live with them and it’s obvious that their relationship was strained. And so, yeah, it makes sense that this is an awkward time for them, but there’s also little things, you know, like the director or the cinematographer, whoever made these decisions, you know,   like they close up on the grandmother in the coffin. There’s a very close shot on a necklace that she’s wearing that has an intricate symbol on it. And this symbol then continues to pop up throughout the rest of the movie. But just these little attention to detail moments, you notice them, because you think, why would they show us this if it weren’t significant? And then when it comes up again, you’re like, oh, I recognize that, what’s going on here? Yeah.

Todd: It’s satisfying as a viewer, right? I mean, you feel like you’re unraveling a mystery, even though you’re not really sure what you’re unraveling. But it’s nice to have those touches where, you know, those are, things are foreshadowed for

Craig: you. So once the funeral’s over, we kind of start to get to know the family. The initial focus seems to be on the daughter, Charlie. She’s young. She’s 13 years old. She’s just different. It’s difficult to describe her. She seems a little bit withdrawn. It seems like her outlet is drawing. She draws a lot. And she just has these weird ticks. Like she clucks, like she just randomly does that. And I remember the first time wondering, maybe she’s on the spectrum. Maybe she has some form of Asperger’s or autism, which causes her to be reserved or   awkward in social scenarios. And it seems like the family is totally used to her. They don’t view her as being really all that odd at all, but we as viewers, you know, she’s kind of different. And they make a big deal out of pointing out that she’s allergic to nuts because that comes up later. And she makes like these like weird sculptures, which, you know, ultimately is kind of weird, but she’s a kid, and she’s kind of a weird, reserved kid, and she takes things and puts them together into these weird sculptures, and she’s just kind   of an odd duck, or at least that’s the way that she’s painted in the early part of the movie.

Todd: Well, and her mom does that too, right? She’s an artist and she kind of puts together these not so weird, very realistic, I thought it was actually a very interesting contrast. At first I was thinking, wow, this little girl kind of grew up trying to emulate her mother, or maybe she’s gotten a little bit of that artistic bent to her, But she’s either not old enough yet or sophisticated enough yet Or maybe her mind is just in a completely different place that she goes this other direction with it It just felt very real that this girl   could still be this woman’s daughter

Craig: sure oh absolutely Charlie seems to be struggling with her grandmother’s death certainly more than her brother And the mom goes in to talk to her 1 night and she says,

Clip: you know, you were her favorite, right? Even when you’re a little baby, she wouldn’t let me feed you because she needed to feed you crazy.   She wanted me to be a boy.   You know I was a tomboy when I was growing up. I hated dresses and dolls and pink.   Who’s gonna take care of me?   Excuse me, You don’t think I’m gonna take care

Craig: of you? They continue their conversation, but the mom eventually says, you know, you never cried as a baby, even when you were born, you never cried. You know, they have this little moment together And it just points out that this girl has always been kind of different which seems very innocent and not Really all that strange at all. You know kids can be weird. That’s not unusual at all, but when you finally know what’s going on in the end it all just comes together and then throughout I’m not gonna point them all out but throughout the   movie at different points and this is the first time we see weird words scrawled on the wall it’s like satiny like S-A-T-O-N-Y is written like in the wallpaper. And we continue to see these foreign words written on the walls throughout the movie. I guess in hindsight it’s kind of interesting that nobody ever questions that. I mean, I guess the only 1 who really ever sees it as the mom Maybe she thinks that it’s Charlie doing it and so she doesn’t think it’s weird I don’t know I would think it was weird if I kept finding all   these foreign words scrawled on my walls, but

Todd: but it’s just there It’s not like anybody sees them and comments on them or anything. It’s just 1 of those things that’s pointed out by the camera.

Craig: Yeah, and it’s not like it’s like spray paint graffiti. It’s like somebody took a pencil and kind of, you know, in a small part of the wallpaper, scratched that in or whatever. The mom goes and looks through her mom’s stuff and she finds a book that is titled Notes on Spirituality and she finds a note in it that says, Dear Annie, forgive me all the things I couldn’t tell you. And then it says other things and it ends with, our sacrifice will pale next to the rewards. And she closes the book and she puts it away   and she turns off the light and she sees the grandmother lurking in the shadows of the room. And we do too, And it’s clearly her. Like, it’s not like it’s just a suggestion. Like, it’s certainly dark. It’s hard to see. But it looks like an apparition. Of course, when she turns the lights on, there’s nothing there. So she just thinks that she’s imagining things. But that’s another thing that I love about this movie. There are suggestions that Toni Collette has struggled with her mental health in the past. And so Now that all these weird things are   going on and she’s kind of struggling with things again, it’s always in the back, it seems, of everybody’s mind that maybe she’s just losing it. Yeah. And I think that that is supposed to be in the back of our minds as the viewer too. You know, is what’s happening to her, is it external or is she just losing it? Because it easily could go either way.

Todd: Yeah, it can and that’s in the way it’s presented and it’s also the way the plot unfolds because you know there are a lot of the things that happen to her and even to The other characters happen away from each other You know their private moments and so you can put yourself in the other characters frame of mind when somebody comes to you and says Hey, this just happened to me or they come to you frantic because they had some experience. Well, we know that we’ve all gone through a difficult time. We’re gonna be seeing things.   We’re gonna have trouble processing. Mom has a sleepwalking problem. I mean, and these little nuggets of information get added slowly through the movie. So just when you’re thinking, oh, maybe it’s a ghost, then you find out, oh, by the way, mom also has a sleepwalking problem. And there was this horrifying incident that happened earlier where she woke up when she had doused her son in his bed with like paint thinner and was about to light him and herself on fire, you know? Right. And it’s like, whoa, okay. You know, it draws you back into questioning and   that’s really interesting. And the way that we even get to that point is she goes to grief counseling for her mother’s death.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: And as she’s sitting there she gives this long monologue of her family history and first of all the performance is fantastic. Yes. The camera if I’m not mistaken doesn’t cut away 1 bit and she just pours this out just like a battered damaged person who’s going through grief would do awkwardly in front of all these strangers. And what she’s doing is almost what we- it’s like the other side of the obituary, right? At the beginning of the movie, we get all the facts about the family. Here, we’re getting all of the skeletons in the closet and   she starts telling that that so-and-so had mental problems her mother was diagnosed with mental problems her uncle killed himself

Craig: no it was her brother and this is it’s it’s important like she reveals such

Todd: detail

Craig: and in the moment it just seems like dark family history well first of all she says that she’s been to grief counseling before and she says well actually I was forced to come so you know obviously there’s some history there yeah and she says that her father died of starvation because he had psychotic depression And then she says that her older brother had schizophrenia

Todd: Yeah,

Craig: and he killed himself and he left a suicide note blaming his grandmother and he said that he killed himself because his grandmother was putting people inside of him.

Todd: The grandmother or mother?

Craig: Well his mother, his

Todd: mother.

Craig: Yeah, yeah his mother. Like the grandmother, but his mother, right. Was putting people inside of him. Which, you know, sounds crazy and the way that she delivers it like like you said she’s just dumping out this dark history and in fact she’s trying to defend her grandmother, her mother excuse me, she she feels guilty that they haven’t had a better relationship and and she says my mother had a horrible life here are the things that happened to her and her son killed himself and blamed her and it all sounds very tragic and sad and it makes   you kind of understand why she might not be the most mentally stable. But those details end up being so significant. But he does such a good job, the director or the writer, whomever does such a good job, of just kind of letting them roll off your back. Like, oh, okay, family history, exposition, but then ultimately… That’s there. It’s puzzle pieces. Yeah, it’s puzzle pieces. And I just think that it’s so well crafted. And she also says that she and her mother had such a strained relationship. They had a relationship up until she got pregnant with her   son that she cut off her mother at that point and she said, and I didn’t let her anywhere near my son but we kind of reconciled and then when I had Charlie the daughter she just sunk her claws into Charlie from the get-go and and Charlie was her favorite and you know, she absolutely doted on her and that’s Entirely relevant too.

Todd: Yeah, I think the kind of turning point here in the movie is a tragedy that happens not long after this

Craig: I read recently that they made pains to hide this. I didn’t see it coming at all. I was so shocked when this happened. It felt tragic to me as a viewer. I was like, oh my God, I can’t believe that just happened. But you tell it.

Todd: It was horrifying. No, it was horrifying. And you know, basically, brother wants to go out to a party that night and mom is I think she’s a little concerned about the party She doesn’t really want to say no, but she’s at quizzing him if he’s gonna drink and he likes to toke quite a bit

Craig: Yeah, he’s a smoker

Todd: She’s like well bring your sister along And she kind of forces the sister to go along to the party too. And I mean, to his credit, he’s like, okay, that’s fine. And he brings her to this teenage house party where everybody’s drinking and smoking and stuff, kind of leaves her to go into a room with a girl he’s interested in and hit a couple bongs. And in the meantime, hit a couple bongs, hit the bong. Yeah. I don’t need to sound like I’m 41, right? I think I can still sound like that. He goes, I think   that man hit a couple bongs of marijuana They’re marijuana smokers So anyway, no he goes to hit the bong in the room and the sister ends up eating some cake that has nuts in it and she runs in and she’s having this episode. And so he grabs her, runs into the car and starts speeding down the road, trying to get her to the hospital. And she’s having trouble breathing and she rolls down the window and she sticks her head out the window. Yeah, totally took me by surprise too. There’s like a dead deer in the middle   of the road, which is also significant. It’s already there. And he has to hit the brakes while his sister’s head is sticking out the window. And there is a pole near the side of the road, which we had seen before, in fact. A car drove by it and the camera lingered on the pole, which happened to have that same symbol on it that the mother’s necklace had. She basically gets decapitated.

Craig: Yes!

Todd: And the fallout from this is just heart-wrenching. Because it’s so… They don’t let up on… I mean, they force you to go through the tragedy along with these characters.

Clip: I

Todd: know. We get this really long shot of this kid behind the wheel just sitting there. He hasn’t turned around, but he knows exactly what’s happened, and tears are welling up in his eyes, and he’s gotta make some decision. He goes home, and it’s just anguish from the mom, and all of this is edited so well together. There are like screams. At first, you’re not sure where they’re coming from and it turns out it’s mom in the bedroom and and that’s juxtaposed against the brother and I just I was like, okay, okay, let’s get past this like   I don’t need to see the family Hurting so much, but he really pushes it in your face and this first half of the movie is really with a little creep with with some you know all this foreshadowing sprinkled in is really a family drama

Craig: yeah

Todd: it’s so funny I’m watching it I’m thinking of the ice storm I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that an Ang Lee movie

Craig: and

Todd: then I went to the IMDB page and read through You know a lot of trivia there and the director cited the ice storm as 1 of his Inspirations for the for the movie so I thought oh, yeah Yeah, that clearly came through and that’s similar There’s a traffic accident a whole family has to go suddenly deal with this tragedy And you’re really up close and personal with them. That was nice. Again, a little bit like the Babadook as well, where you’re sort of forced to deal with this poor woman who’s gotta handle this kid who’s really   a handful. Yeah, yeah. Oh, but it wasn’t pleasant. Oh.

Craig: No, oh my gosh. And the director does a lot with close-ups, you know, after the young girl is decapitated, it’s just a close-up on the brother’s face and like he’s clearly in shock, like he doesn’t know what to do. And So he just goes home and goes to bed, you know, with the sister’s body in the back seat. And the next morning he hears his parents wake up and he hears his mom say, oh, I’m just going to run into town for a minute or whatever. And but it just stays on his face until you start   to hear Tony Collette shrieking. Like it’s just the most anguished shrieking. And then she just continues. You see a scene of her just on the floor, you know, writhing on the floor, and her husband trying to console her and her saying, I can’t do it, I just wish I was dead, and screaming and screaming, and then at the funeral, she’s still just unconsolable, and ugh. I can’t imagine the emotional gravity that it would take to portray that, but oh boy, is it effective.

Todd: It made this movie so hard to watch, Craig. We’re gonna have to watch some stupid, hilarious, dumbass 80s horror film next week because I can’t take much more of this kind of stuff 2 weeks in a row, you know? It just really gets to you after, I mean the whole movie lingers with you, you know, long, at least for me, lingered with me long after I finished watching it, and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. Right,

Craig: it is, it’s tough to watch, but it’s so well done. And so then the next 10 minutes really just kind of deal with them dealing with their grief, and the mom is kind of a mess and the boy is at school and he can’t focus and he’s a mess. The mom eventually goes back to the grief counseling but she can’t bring herself to go in. She’s in the parking lot and she goes to leave but somebody flags her down and it’s this woman and she says, you know, I, I see, I saw you here the last   time you were here. Are you okay? And she tells her, you know, I, I, the last time I was here, it was because of my mom or whatever, but I lost my daughter and this lady says, oh, I lost my son, and my grandson, they drown. And she gives her her phone number. And then weird things start happening, like Peter will be laying in bed and he’ll hear those clucks that Charlie used to do, like in the night, and it scares him. Someone very ominously slides a flyer into their mail slot for this like public seance.   And eventually Annie goes, she calls Joan, the woman who gave her the number, and she goes to visit her and she notices her welcome mat and she says, oh, I noticed your welcome mat. My mother used to embroider ones just like that. Hello. Like major foreshadowing. Just little tiny things like she’s drinking tea at Joan’s house and she picks something off of her lip, like there’s something in her tea. Like I have no idea what it was supposed to be. Little suspicious things. And that’s when she tells the story, the sleepwalking story. And she says that   Peter has never really trusted her since then.

Todd: Yeah, and then what just follows is just this family coming to terms with it while weird things are happening to them. And what you said really rings true in that you’re really not sure if what’s happening is just in their minds because they’re trying to process the grief or if it is actually something supernatural. And I think you’re really questioning that almost up to the very end of the film.

Craig: Oh

Todd: yeah. And even then, you know, I walked away and I thought, could still the whole film be interpreted that way? Could it still all kind of be, by the end of it, they’re all an absolute mess and half of this is going on in their heads? And I don’t think so at the end of the day. No. But you do wonder if there’s a bit of magical realism going on here, you know, right? But no, I think at the end of the day, it’s not but you’re certainly questioning it and that’s good Because the characters are   questioning it as well So once again the director is putting you in their spot in that dollhouse to experience all this with them and also have these questions. It’s really emotionally engaging and draining at the same time.

Craig: It is. And while these suspicious things are going on, still we are dealing with the family drama. And 1 of my favorite scenes in the movie is 1 of the hardest ones to watch, where they are all, Annie is becoming very distant and she’s making a model of the accident scene, which upsets the husband, because he thinks if the son sees it, he’s gonna be upset. And it all leads to this really uncomfortable dinner scene, Where everybody is just very distant at first. And finally, Peter says something to his mom. I think he just asks her   if she’s okay. And she’s like, what, what? Why wouldn’t I be okay? And he says well is there anything on your mind. It’s like is there anything on your mind

Clip: Yeah, okay, so fine and say what you want to say that

Todd: hey, dad.

Clip: I don’t want to say anything. I’ve tried Saying

Craig: okay, so try again release yourself.

Clip: Oh release you you mean   yeah fine release me just say it just Don’t you swear at me you little shit. Don’t you ever raise your voice at me! I am your mother! Do you understand? All I do is worry and slay and defend you. And all I get back is that fucking face on your face, so full of disdain and resentment and always so annoyed. Well now your sister is dead. And I know you miss her. And I know it was an accident and I know you’re in pain And I wish I could take that away for you I wish I   could shield you from the knowledge that you did what you did, but your sister is dead.

Craig: I love Tony Colette so much but in this moment I hated her and I understand like they have dealt with such a horrible tragedy, and I can’t imagine processing that, because ultimately, it wasn’t the son’s fault.

Todd: Right, Right.

Craig: But as a result of his actions, Charlie is gone. Yeah. And it seems like that’s what she’s really struggling with and they have this major confrontation and she just says the most awful things to him like, you know, I want to be there for you, but then I just look at your face and it’s just your face. Like, it killed me because it’s awful. As a mother, she should never say these things. But as a person who has been devastated by tragedy, not just once, but throughout her life, she’s clearly damaged. It’s hard to listen to   and it hurts him and you can see he’s crying. The last thing she says is, nobody will take accountability for the things that they’ve done and he says well What about you you made her go to the party? She didn’t want to go you made her go and that’s finally when the dad’s like, that’s it That’s enough and poor Gabriel burns character just has to be the 1 who tries to keep everybody’s shit together throughout the movie. And I feel so bad for him. And there’s finally 1 point towards the end of the movie where he   finally breaks down and I’m like, dude, cry it out.

Todd: I think another really significant scene is the dream within a dream sequence that happens after this, where the mother is presumably sleepwalking and she ends up in the son’s room, and we get even yet a little more information and She says some more nasty things to him. It turns out she’s in the dream, so she didn’t actually say these nasty things, but she says to him, you know, I didn’t even want you. I didn’t even want you to be born. And she admits that she tried to have a miscarriage when he was pregnant. And he shoots   back like, of course that feeds right into his fear of you were trying to kill me with the paint thinner, you know, even when I was in bed and older and all that. So then you really start to worry about this family. Mom is a time bomb, You know, even sleepwalking, she could do something damaging to these people. So it just creates this tense situation that’s just in any moment. What’s already pretty out of control, but it could get dangerously out of control very quickly. And that’s a lot of the tension of the movie.

Craig: Absolutely. And like you said, that moment ends up being a dream. But of course we don’t know that in the moment. And I just, I can’t praise Toni Collette’s performance enough. She said, you know, they’re talking, they’re having a conversation and she says, I never wanted you. And the way that she delivers it is she says it and then it’s like she realizes what she said and she’s horrified. Just her reaction, like she says it out loud and then gasps and covers her face like, I can’t believe that I just said that out loud. And then   she continues to go on to try to explain what just makes things even worse right around that time She goes to visit Joan actually she meets bumps into Joan in a parking lot Yeah, Joan is all ecstatic and she’s like, oh my gosh. I just had this amazing experience I went to this public seance and she’s like, I know what you’re thinking, I know it sounds crazy and that’s what I thought too, but you know, there were all kinds of people there, doctors, scientists, and by the time we left, everybody was convinced and I spoke to   the medium after and she came back to my house and you just have to come with me. You have to come with me. I have to show you something. And so she takes her back to her house and she says, now I know you’re going to think this is crazy, but this medium helped me contact my dead grandson. And she says, I can show you. And she does. She does this seance where it’s kind of a Ouija board thing except they use a drinking glass and it works you know like the glass moves and Tony Collette   clearly like feels things going on around her and her reactions again Tony Collette’s reactions in this moment are just amazing. And eventually Tony Collette gets freaked out and says, I have to go. But Joan says, okay, it’s okay. I understand you got to go. But if you want to do this yourself, here are the instructions on this piece of paper. All you have to do is recite this incantation and Tony Colette’s like, what language is this? She’s like, oh, I don’t know, just say it. The lady told me to say it. And she’s like, and you   have to make sure that everybody in your family is in the house when it happens.

Todd: Pretty smart.

Craig: Which is so ominous and like if you watch horror movies never read an incantation that you

Todd: know what it means out loud.

Craig: This is never going to lead to good news. But ultimately, she does. She does it in the house by herself, which we don’t see, it’s off camera. But then apparently it works, so she calls the whole family down, and they are very skeptical, of course, as you would be, and the father is actually a little bit irritated but the son says it’s okay you know we can try it I suppose and they do but things just don’t go right it all seems very uncomfortable like the glass moves but then other things start happening. Something shatters in   the room, the candle flares up, the sun is very uncomfortable and very upset and crying. And at 1 point the mom almost seems to kind of become almost hypnotized and it seems as though she’s speaking to her own mother and she says, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to scare us? And her husband throws a glass of water in her face to bring her out of it. And once he does, she doesn’t even know what has happened. That sets into motion the whole last part from this point on.   She unwittingly, in her desperation, has opened a door that they just can’t close at that point.

Todd: That’s a very good way of putting it. And you know what, I was just thinking about this. Her look and her feeling, she was in many ways so channeling. Shelley Duvall, I felt like, in Shining, and very much so. She even has a little bit of her look like a young Shelly DeVaul Uh-huh. You’re right. It just kind of spirals out of control and I think you just have to see the movie but all this Clearly supernatural stuff starts happening. She starts putting pieces together She goes back up into She tries to go back to Joan   and Joan’s not there, but we can see inside Joan’s apartment and we see suddenly she’s got all this weird stuff and a picture of her in there.

Craig: A picture of Peter.

Todd: Peter, right, a picture of Peter and also those symbols on the wall.

Craig: Like on a shrine kind of thing, Right.

Todd: And she goes back upstairs into the attic and she pulls out her mom’s stuff again and and and pulls out those those doormats and realizes yeah she’s made these for a lot of people and it is exactly like Joan. Right.

Craig: And

Todd: then she pulls out the frickin photo album and there’s Joan in there along with her mom you know clearly involved in this weird-ass cult thing in like a wedding dress and and there are people having ceremonies and all this stuff and it’s just, it’s like straight, flat out, Roseberry’s baby kind of stuff.

Craig: Oh yeah.

Todd: Here’s basically what’s happening. There is this demon and she reads it in the book, you know, it’s another 1 of those cases. She opens this occult book to the right page and there’s a highlighted passage in an underlined sentence, you know, that spells out what we need to know. And that is that there’s some demon that this occult group was trying to conjure up and her mother was obviously deeply involved with making this happen. But this particular demon is uncomfortable in a female body. It needs a male body to inhabit. Once again, you kind of put   all those pieces together, what we heard earlier in the movie like you said about her own family and her kids and now you know why her mother was obsessed with the son and Then when she couldn’t get with the son Had to sink her claws into the daughter And then it starts to kind of explain why was the daughter so weird? Well, the implication here, I think, is that that demon was, in some sense, inhabiting the daughter’s body. It was just not a very successful possession, you know, not complete or whatever, or just at least uncomfortable   and needed to move on. Right. And you know it all has to do with this blue light that we see a lot of places you know happening that we didn’t mention but there’s that. But then it starts to get to the Sun and the Sun starts freaking out as well as this demon is getting closer and closer to him.

Craig: And like losing control, like there’s a scene where in school he loses control of his body. He raises his hand in a very odd way and the teacher calls on him but it becomes clear that he’s not in control of his body and his face is contorting And eventually he slams his face down on the desk. Now I don’t know if that was like Peter, you know, slamming his face down on the desk to kind of reclaim. Himself. Because it seems to shock him out of it. Yeah, Like the pain shocks him out of it and   he comes back. And this poor kid, I mean, he’s seeing things like he’s sitting in class and he turns and there’s a glass case next to him and his reflection is just smiling at him, honestly. He calls his dad from school and we don’t hear the conversation, we just hear it relayed. But the dad tells the mom that he feels that Peter feels like some sort of spirit is trying to take over his body, which again all falls into place because that’s why Annie’s brother killed himself. He killed himself because he was supposedly schizophrenic and he   blamed the grandmother for putting

Todd: Trying to put people inside him. Inside him. Yep. Right. There’s all the supernatural stuff happening with Annie’s book and drawings of the sun are showing up in there with the eyes X’d out and the mud, this is freaking out the mom. And so mom isn’t, you know, this is the thing. It’s not like mom is becoming overtaken with part of this plot to also possess her son. She’s starting to get a sense of what’s going on, and so she’s trying to protect him, but all of her efforts to protect him are backfiring. And she goes up   to the attic, and this is another case of where something that was planted early on, the husband had gotten a phone call from the cemetery saying that the grave had been desecrated and he just doesn’t tell the rest of the family. Later on, oh yeah, that happened, and it turns out that the mother’s body had been dug up by somebody, decapitated, and put up in their attic all this time. And when the mother goes up there and finds it, she’s like, oh my God, you know, and she just flips out and the husband comes home and   he’s flipping out because she’s flipping out. He is like, you are insane. This is crazy. And Gabriel Byrne just plays this so well, you know? He does such a good job of the guy who’s really trying to hold it together. He’s really trying to be that reassuring rock for his wife. But the more and more she goes on, finally he kind of reluctantly decides, I’ve gotta put my foot down. We can’t let this go on. She wants him to burn this book and she cannot successfully burn this book because when she tries to do it Every   place the book gets set on fire her own clothes get set on fire So she’s like you’ve got to do it, which is a big mistake She tosses the book into the fire at the end of their big argument, and he just bursts into flames, and he’s out. And then she’s just bonkers from here on out, and the sun comes home and finds him.

Craig: Oh my gosh, and again, there’s a moment where, you know, when she sees him burst into flame, like she opens her mouth in a silent scream. And then in an instant, her facial expression changes. And you just see that that’s it. Like, well, she just broke. Like I just watched it happen. And then things get totally crazy. Like Peter is home this whole time, but I guess that he was sedated after he knocked himself in the face, because like they had to carry him in the house. So I guess he was sedated, but he wakes up   and he goes downstairs. And even before he goes downstairs, when he wakes up, he kind of like hears something in his room and he doesn’t see it, but we do. His mom is crawling around on the walls behind him. Like literally. Yeah. All of a sudden it’s crazy, crazy. And I have to think the only way that I can interpret that is that now she is in some way completely overtaken by whatever force is you know caught yeah this to happen

Todd: I think what happened was you know the spirit was kind of in the book or somehow connected to the book, and so when she tosses that book in the fire, it jumps out of there because there is a flash of that blue light when her expression suddenly changes. But of course, we know it can’t be in a female body forever. So now he is using her and her broken mind as kind of the agency in which to execute the rest of the plans.

Craig: Well, and it said that the book that talked about it’s King Payman is this demon or god or whatever it is and it says that it will inhabit the most vulnerable person available. And so I can only imagine in that moment that she was the most vulnerable.

Todd: Without a doubt.

Craig: So he goes downstairs, he finds his dad’s body, and things just get so creepy. Like we see over his shoulder that his mother is lurking over him on the ceiling, but He doesn’t see her, but he turns and he sees this creepy ass, smiling, naked old guy standing in a doorway.

Todd: I know.

Craig: He doesn’t see his mom, but she gets off the ceiling somehow and then bursts out of nowhere. And then at 100 miles an hour chases him up into the attic.

Todd: That jump scare was so effective. So effective. She comes out of the corner,

Craig: yeah, right at him, and he runs. And it’s so fast. It’s not like regular movie chasing where it’s like, oh no, don’t get me. Like, no, like they sprint.

Todd: It’s literal. This is what would really happen if you were suddenly being chased, yeah. And he runs up in the attic because it’s the only thing available to him at that moment. You know, it’s not like he had a choice and he runs up in the attic and pulls the thing up Behind him, but then he sees the body in there and then suddenly without really good explanation The mom is again hanging from the ceiling, but she has a piano wire Yeah floating and she is very deliberately and robotically starting to saw off her own head.   At first I thought she was stabbing herself.

Craig: And the naked people are up there.

Clip: The naked

Todd: people are up there, yeah.

Craig: I applaud when nudity is not made a big deal of. Like, it’s not sexual, it’s creepy and weird, but it’s just straight up naked people, you know?

Todd: They gots to be naked for the ceremony or something. Right. Oh, it’s just like, there’s another possession movie like this that came out in the 70s that did exactly the same thing. It was kind of a Rosemary’s Baby-esque movie. I can’t remember the name of it, but yeah, it was a similar deal where all these naked people were standing around being creepy. I mean, he pulled this directly off of some earlier films.

Craig: Sure. To escape all of this, Peter jumps out the window. And while he’s laying unconscious on the floor, we continue to hear the sawing until it stops. And then we hear a thud on the floor so she’s clearly decapitated herself. And then the spirit light that we’ve seen several times comes back and seems to kind of, I don’t know, the sense that I got was that it kind of went into him And I think that that’s what we’re meant to believe because he wakes up and he stands up and he sees his mother, headless, levitate into   the tree house and he follows her. The forest that surrounds their house is lined by all these creepy naked people. He climbs up in there, more creepy naked people all bowing down to this weird mannequin-esque kind of statue with Charlie’s head on it and his grandmother and his mother also headless bowing to this thing and he just stands there and then Joan we don’t see her face but I think it was meant to be her her voice seemed familiar crowns him literally takes a crown and crowns him and says, Oh, Charlie, don’t and I mean that   I’m not making a mistake. I screw up names all the time. But she crawled. She calls him Charlie and says, everything’s okay now. We have got you into your new body. You are Paimon. Thank you for all you’ve done for us. Continue to bless us. And she shouts, Hail Paimon, and everybody else shouts, Hail Paimon, and he just stands there. And the implication is that this demon now, like Peter is gone, And he is now this demon that or God or whatever it is that Charlie was before. And the very last scene is just a cut   to the actual last scene, but in the miniature, Like the model. And oh my god, I just thought that it was so haunting. And it’s 1 of those movies where the bad guys win. And it can be frustrating in some situations, but in this it’s almost, I don’t want to say satisfying, because I feel bad. I liked these people. I was rooting for them, but it felt Right that they lost, you know, they were being manipulated from the beginning. There was even when Peter was in school the lessons that he was listening to were all about   Greek tragedy and fate.

Todd: And

Craig: it talks about like, is it more tragic if the tragic hero has a choice or if he was just fated to fall? And in this case, it seems like the suggestion is that this was, you know, they were doomed from the beginning. They were just these pieces being moved around. And this was how things were destined to happen. And it is tragic and it is sad, but it seems like the most appropriate ending. I can’t think of an ending that would have been more appropriate.

Todd: No, I completely agree with you. And it’s also in line with this genre of film, you know, the Satan worshipper genre. I mean, if you look at them most of the time in the horror genre, they get it. You know, it’s like Rosemary’s Baby, for example. The Antichrist is here now. We were succeeded in our plot, and yes, it was a plot all along. Ha ha ha ha ha. You know, and that’s the thing. The Rosemary’s Baby, The Wicker Man, you know, most of these films end this way and it’s interesting that a movie that actually   does pull Shamelessly from a lot of these different already well established and in some cases well worn tropes and images and whatnot can feel just so fresh and still be so terrifying. You know, it doesn’t feel like a movie that’s stealing from all of these things. It feels like a movie that at best is paying homage to them and in fact, putting it together in a very organic way. Yeah. It worked for me. It worked very much for me. Oh, the other 1 I was thinking it was The Witch. It seemed a little bit to have   a bit of that flavor, right?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: I loved it. I thought this movie was a blast. Well, a blast. It wasn’t fun to watch in the sense that, you know, I felt ill through a lot of it, and it was a real emotionally draining experience, but it was a very cathartic, satisfying experience. Well made, beautiful to see, incredible performances that really draw you in. And I can see where he’s getting a lot of rave reviews about this and we’re already anticipating his next movie, which I think there’s already a trailer out for it now.

Craig: Ah, yeah, well I look forward to it because I thought this movie was fantastic. You know, I think I would go so far as to say that this was probably the best horror movie of 2018. I just thought that it was absolutely, I just thought it was brilliant. Everything about it, the score was fantastic. All the cinematography was great. All the performances were great. But I swear, Tony Collette just blew me away in this movie. I just thought that she was brilliant. All right, Well, thank you very much for listening to another episode. Thank you, Joseph,   for recommending this movie. This is the most fun that I’ve had watching and talking about 1 of these movies for a while. We’re gonna continue to do some more requests for the next couple of weeks. And if you have requests, go ahead and send them in. We can’t guarantee that we’ll get to them this time around, but we really enjoy looking at and talking about movies that you all are interested in. And we will get around to them eventually, so Let us know. If you enjoyed this episode, you can find us all over the place. I   listen to us on Google Play, but we’re also on iTunes, Stitcher. We’ve got our website. We’ve got our Facebook page where we encourage you to interact with us. We love hearing from you. We’ll be back again next week with another request. Until then, I’m Craig. And I’m Todd. With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.