"Hereditary" Is the Year’s Most Messed-Up Movie; Ari Aster Told Us How He Made It

Won’t somebody think of the children?

I’m not just referring to the cursed kids in the haunted dollhouse brought to life from Hereditary, but of the poor bebés who got a glimpse of the terrifying trailer while waiting for Peter Rabbit at a Perth cinema.

Traumatising accident? Darkly hilarious prank? To paraphrase an Old El Paso ad, "Why can’t it be both?"

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Movie Review: "Hereditary" Is Pure Nightmare Fuel for Anyone With a Family (So, Everyone)

Hereditary’s writer-director Ari Aster has another take, when Student Edge explained the cinematic faux pas: "I’m particularly interested in what kids might have to say about this movie."

"I mean, I certainly intended it for the whole family," he added, jokingly. Parents, forward your therapy bills accordingly.

It’s not just that cinema of mums and bubs that’ll need consoling. Pretty much everyone will exit Hereditary utterly disturbed. The film focuses on a woman (Toni Collette) reckoning with the death of her overbearing mother, not realising she’s a figure of torment for her own kids too. Aster gives Collette’s character a perfectly creepy pastime: she’s a professional artist who makes miniature dollhouses, recreating her family’s accumulating, violent tragedies. Inevitably, their family house—built on a set, for maximum spooky framing—becomes home to supernatural violence too.

As Aster admits, underselling it somewhat, "This is certainly a film that plays a lot with dread."

But his inspiration was far from dread inducing. It was actually kind-of adorable.             

"I’ve always been fascinated by [dollhouses], ever since I was a kid and a big fan of Wallace and Gromit," he said.

"I remember I was living in England at the time, and there was an exhibit for Wallace and Gromit; like an Aardman exhibit. And they had all the miniature sets. That’s the first memory I have of really falling in love with miniatures.

"But when I was writing the script, they just felt like the perfect metaphor for the family’s situation. They’re people who ultimately have no agency and they’re revealed to be akin to dolls who are being moved around and manipulated in a dollhouse. So, it really started there. And then from there this dollhouse aesthetic kind of emerged, which we were then able to really execute by building the entire house on a stage by scratch."

The dollhouses—small and large—make Hereditary creepy, yet it’s the depiction of a family in a spiral of self-fulfilling torture that really unsettles.

"[Families are] just really great fodder for drama, going all the way back to Shakespeare or beyond, like Medea," Aster says.

"These are our most significant connections in life and so a betrayal in a family is so much more devastating than a betrayal among friends or even lovers."

For Hereditary to work, casting the family members would be key; especially since no actor could be as malleable as a figurine in a dollhouse.

Collette, who previously played the mother of a haunted child in The Sixth Sense, didn’t need much convincing; Aster sent her the script, along with a letter—"just to tell her how much I loved her"—and she attached herself early on.

"It is a very demanding role and it’s not a particularly pretty role, right? She has to go to some very, very dark upsetting places," Aster says.

"The film isn’t real until you’ve attached an actor of a certain calibre, especially when you’re trying to make a film of this scope," he explains, "because it is an independent film and ultimately it was a small film, but it was quite ambitious for a small film.”

"The fact that we built everything on a stage, I’m still kind of amazed that we were able to do that on my first film, but I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that Toni attached herself and put her trust in me. So, I’ll always be grateful to her simply for that: for basically getting the train moving. And then, beyond that, I’m very grateful for the performance she gave."

The face of the film, however, is Milly Shapiro, who plays Collette’s odd-duck daughter, Charlie.

"We had a few discussions early on about Charlie, and she was able to take a few not-particularly insightful ideas from me and run with them in a seemingly endless set of variations," Aster fawns.

"I’m still pretty amazed with what Milly has done here and I can’t remember what I had in my head before she came onboard. But she’s an amazing singer; when you hear her sing she’s incredible, and obviously she won a Tony when she was 10 years old for playing Matilda on Broadway. Milly’s pretty extraordinary and I think we’ll be seeing a lot from her."

Hereditary is now Australian cinemas.

Photo: StudioCanal