Hereditary and the State of Horror in Today’s Corporatized Cinema

Sorry for the lack of posting; last weekend I was dealing with a death in the family and wasn’t in the mood to try and do an episode of the YouTube webcast, or do any writing.

Anyway, I had opportunity to watch Hereditary, the horror movie written and directed by Ari Aster and starring Toni Collette. I won’t give away too much because I really don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, except to say that if you’re looking for something with a “happy” ending or that pulls punches, you might want to watch something else. But if you’ve the stomach for the cinematic taboos this piece of cinema breaks without so much as flinching, then I recommend you go see it on the big screen in a darkened theater. You really need to do that to get the proper horror film experience.

The story deals with the subjects of inherited mental illness and the cycles of abuse and covering up that go with it. Under the guise of witch-cults and demonic possession, the movie doesn’t let its audience off the hook in condemning the failure of families to address hereditary insanity, warning that as long as we refuse to confront it and take action to get sufferers into effective treatment, the cycle will continue.

As horror movies go, I thought it was fairly good, although there were a few weak spots in the story as there are in any tale told in human history. But the good far outweighed the bad, in my humble opinion. It handles its subject matter on a far more adult level than many might be comfortable with. I was particularly impressed with the creepy performance turned in by Milly Shapiro, who plays daughter Charlie.

But the movie got me thinking of the horror genre more generally and its place in film theory. Having taken it in film school, I saw a lot in Hereditary that really ought to be in other genres, but is instead sorely lacking. Yes, by that I’m specifically calling out the brainless modern iterations of Star Trek and Star Wars.

I have long been a fan of horror (and its twin, science fiction) as a storytelling medium, especially for its ability to tell sociopolitical morality tales. In my last video, with Tom Connors of Midnight’s Edge, we were talking about how much horror has been influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, the seminal 1960 flick about a motel owner whose domineering mother drove him to become lost in maintaining the memory of her. John Carpenter’s Halloween famously used the character of Michael Myers to replay Hitchcock’s archetype of the emasculated male driven to slaughter young people, especially women, in an effort to reclaim his masculinity. Further, the character of Laurie Strode, like Norman Bate’s parent, represents the Primal Mother, whose power to dominate or defend against male aggression ultimately prevails. And, of course, in a nod to Psycho, Donald Pleasence’s character Sam Loomis was named after the boyfriend in Hitchcock’s masterpiece.

1980’s Friday the 13th, directed by Sean S. Cunningham, turns the concept of the primal mother dominating her offspring to the point of consuming him, on its ear by reversing it: The trauma of losing a child consumes the mother, who then becomes the child in her own mind in order to both erase the tragedy and get revenge. So powerful is this cinematic concept that Cunningham has been battling it out in court with Friday co-creator Victor Miller in court over ownership, which is a whole story in itself.

And who can forget Wes Craven’s 1984 horror-slasher A Nightmare on Elm Street, wherein Craven successfully pulls off what Hitchcock did decades before by killing off the movie’s opening protagonist part-way through the story?

All these films were much-influenced by Alfred Hitchcock, who was a master of manipulating his audience and who possessed tremendous understanding of the human psyche. Hereditary is no different in owing its story’s concepts to Hitchcock’s use of the Primal Mother to frighten audiences. It is through the matrilineal side of the movie’s family that the evils are passed on, and it is the ever-present domination of the family matriarch even in death that drives the action. To the extent that the male characters factor into the story, it is as victims, the dominated being controlled and ultimately consumed by the females.

Of course, Hereditary borrows as much from Robin Hardy’s 1973 masterpiece, The Wicker Man, as it does from Hitchcock, in misdirecting the audience, although those who’ve seen the earlier film will probably see it coming from a mile away. That, I think, is the only major weak spot in Aster’s narrative, but it’s hardly his fault nor can it really be helped. It still works.

There’s a parallel between Hitchcock’s concept of powerful women emasculating weaker males, and Hardy’s. In The Wicker Man, Edward Woodward’s Sergeant Neil Howie is tempted by Britt Ekland’s Willow MacGregor in a seductive nighttime dance that leaves the former frustrated and impotent to deal with his own sexual urges, which he continually suppresses. And it is that very suppression, borne of fear of women masked in pseudo-Christian righteousness, that ultimately proves his undoing. One less frightened of women might have given in and saved himself in the process, but his unwillingness to acknowledge his urges as normal and healthy and alter his attitude toward women, dooms him.

The pattern in these films and their imitators is one in which women have far more power over men, for good or for ill, than many are comfortable with, and in the slasher subgenre of horror, the only way for males to reassert their masculinity is to lash out in violence. They are compelled to kill or dominate in their own twisted manner, unable to cope with the control women have over their lives.

As this concept applies to modern horror and slasher movies, and cinema in general, I think there’s something lost in the seemingly endless string of reboots and reimaginings. None of the reboots really capture the spirit of the originals, leaving shallow, empty shells of the stories told far better and with much more informed inspiration by writers and directors who have greater understanding of both cinematic language and human psychology. For all we’re supposed to believe that STD and Disney Star Wars are promoting “strong women,” they’re really not, because the female concepts have nothing beneath the pretty skins of the actresses portraying them. The concepts are poorly written and executed, make goofball mistakes that belie their supposed strength, and are so incompetent and unsympathetic it is difficult to believe proclaimed strength.

Too many of today’s so-called writer-directors have learned only the technical aspects of movie-making, without learning any of the deeper storytelling taught in film theory. It really takes more original projects by people such as Astor to tell the kinds of horror-driven morality tales we need. The blockbuster adventures over-saturating movie theaters just can’t do the job, at least not on the adult level Hereditary and its contemporaries do. For all the social and political subtext in, say, Black Panther, it can’t even begin to compete with lower-budget, more independent films. That’s because a budget of tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars generally suppresses true creativity, almost requiring movie-makers to play down or ignore deeper meaning altogether. There’s too much pressure to go for the cheap thrills and laundry-list checkpoints, because something that actually makes people think about the subject matter within the story is considered too risky given the amount of money being spent. Better, the studios think, to take the safer path.

The problem is that this risk aversion provides hit-or-miss results, and as we’re seeing with Star Wars, it’s more miss than hit. But the beauty of having a lower-budget horror story is that the risk might be higher, but so too are the rewards at the box office if it scores a home run with audiences. Consider that Carpenter’s Halloween, made for $320,000, pulled in seventy million dollars worldwide at the box office, far exceeding what was spent to make and market the film. Suppose Marvel Studios and LucasFilm were forced to make smaller films that focus more on character and storytelling, than on a laundry list of stunts and gimmicks? How might cinema change for the better?

Anyway, those are my thoughts. What do you think? Let me know in the comments. If you like what you read here and want to help me improve the webcast, please consider becoming a patron by clicking the link to my Patreon page and subscribing. Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and hit the bell icon to receive notifications when I upload content.