Hereditary’s Intergenerational Curse

Abstract

Hereditary (2018) is a film about the horrors that occur in families. The film starts with the death of the matriarch in the family, and it is unsubtle in the examination of grief and the secrets that the family holds. Hereditary is about Annie, whose mother has died. She gives a distant and controlled eulogy at her mother’s funeral saying, ‘It’s heartening to see so many strange new faces here’ when describing a ‘secretive, suspicious’ woman who was a difficult parent. However, the grief, that bubbles forth becomes the conduit to the abject and uncanny and starts an unravelling of the family. A common trope in horror is that houses are the scariest places of all, and just as old houses have adapted to modern lifestyles, haunted-house stories have accommodated our generational anxieties and, in this house, and family the build-up of horror is placed in the family home. The haunted house in this film for example demonstrates that the family home rather than locking troubles out, they live within. This chapter explores the horror of the decay of this family in Hereditary, and how this family reflects an intergenerational terror by demonic devotion.