Hereditary with Puloma Ghosh

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
On the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
The questions asked if movies have women and them, are
all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they
have individualism? It's the patriarchy, z Ephyn bast start changing
with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hale, Caitlon, Yeah, Hale, James Amon.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
It actually works pretty well, a little too well, a
little too well, too well, a little suspicious, I think.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Well, welcome to the Beymon Cast. My name's jaymon Leyman and.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
My name is Kymon Deraymon.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Well, yeah, wow, look at us, and this is the
show where we talk about your favorite movies from an
intersectional feminist perspective, using the Bechdel Test as a jumping
point for discussion. But Kaitlyn, what the hell? Cape? Sorry,
I'm so sorry, came on, came on? Came on, Deraimon?

(01:10):
What is that? It's not gonna stop being funny to me?
Buckle in for an episode? Uh, came on, Deraymond. What
is the Bechdel Test?

Speaker 3 (01:20):
It is a media metric created by Alison Bechdel. I
almost tried to make Alison Bechdel's name demonic as well.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
But she just leave her out of it.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
It's not Yeah, I'm so sorry, two days out.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Of Pride Month and you're demonizing Alison Bechdel.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Come on, damn anyway. It's a media metric, first appearing
in her comic Dicks to Watch Out For in the
nineteen eighties. It's often called the Bechdel Wallace test because
it was co created by Alison Bechdel and her friend
Liz Wallace. It was kind of created as a bit.
It appears in the comic as as a bit specific.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah that like more references how few queer women there
are in media. It's always more complicated that it's presented
in the mainstream.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Indeed, and there are many different versions of it. The
one that we use is this, do two characters of
a marginalized gender have names? Do they speak to each other?
And is there conversation about something other than a man
or about something other than Peymon? If so, it passes
the Bechdel test.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
I guess are we to believe? I mean, Peymon is
pretty aggressively gendered. I guess, yeah, yeah, so tell me
about it. We can't like really talk like many like,
we can't be like Paymon is a genderless entity. In fact,
that's part of the whole thing, all right, never mind.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
The whole and yeah, we'll talk about it.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Fuck what I was about to say. And today we
are covering a movie that I am pretty sure we
have gotten pretty consistent, especially during like horror movie season,
We've gotten pretty consistent requests for since it came out,
and that is our Asters twenty eighteen movie, Hereditary. And

(03:04):
we have with us not just an incredible writer, not
just an incredible person, but number one Hereditary fan. Let's
get her in here.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Let's she's a writer and author of the short story
collection entitled Mouth, which just came out, so check it out.
It's Paloma Ghosh, Hello, Hi, Hello, come.

Speaker 4 (03:26):
So my name actually does start with a pece so.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
Pala mon wow, pala, and it has a lot of
the same letters as Peymon. So I kind of fucked
that intro up. So it's Peymon gosh Hello, Hi.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
Although as a long suffering Digimon fan, I just I'm
envisioning this as everyone's Digimon names right now.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Oh, it kind of is.

Speaker 5 (03:52):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
I was a Pokemon girl. I was basic. Oh I
was basic. I know. Yeah, And the rivalry begins quick pivot.
So we're re covering Hereditary Caitlin came on is under Duress.
I'm really excited. I feel like we have a real
range of opinions in the chat about Hereditary twenty eighteen.

(04:16):
So let's start with you, Paloma. What is your connection
to this movie? What is your history with Hereditary?

Speaker 4 (04:23):
So I am a fan of horror movies and try
to watch like every horror movie that is supposedly good,
even the ones that are supposedly not good. So when
this came out, all of the talk about it was
really exciting. People were like, I left the theater and
like threw up or whatever. So I had to see it,

(04:45):
and I saw it in theaters and it scared the
shit out of me. I had trouble sleeping. I had nightmares.
I had like, you know, wake up in the middle
of the night, gasping nightmares. And I was so scared.
And so I was like, this movie rules, because if
you watch a lot of horror, when something genuinely like
scares the shit out of you, it's exciting and not revolting.

(05:10):
And as a writer, I was like, Okay, this was
successful for me. I must immediately pull it apart and
figure out why. So I watched it over and over.
I have outlined it, I have like tracked scares. I've
tried to figure out like the mechanics of how this
movie fucked me up like badly, and a lot of

(05:32):
people I know as well for a while.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, whether you like this movie or you don't like it,
I feel like it's almost import you have to be
so hardened to the worlds for it to not fuck
you up truly. But I'm curious about how Yeah, I mean,
we'll talk about it, but like, I'm getting so amped
and terrified to talk about this movie. Caitlin came on,
what is your history with Hereditary?

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Okay? I saw it in theaters and it was probably
the the most unpleasant movie theater going experience I've ever had.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
I remember, I think you maybe texted me after you
saw this and you were just like, I've just had
I've just had a hell of a night. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
So I don't seek out horror movies as much as
most other genres. It's not that I don't like horror.
There are many horror movies I love, but I'm very
easily startled and scary movies. Even when they're not very
scary and not very good, they still make me so
nervous and just like stricken with anxiety. And I'm pretty

(06:38):
squeamish when it comes to like guts and gore and
blood and body horror. So the odds are just stacked
against me. So I struggle with a lot of horror movies,
but I still see a lot of them. And I
went to go see Hereditary because I heard that it
was so scary and so well done and like very
well directed, and there were incredible performances. So I went

(07:00):
to see the movie and I walked away from it
in full body pain because I was so clenched up,
just like shoulders to my ears, like plugging my ears
the whole time. It's just so tight and tense.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
So it worked.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
It worked. It was a very effective horror movie. There
aren't that many jump scares. There's maybe only two or
three things that might startle you, but it just fills
you with well, I won't speak for everyone. It filled
me with such dread such.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
I felt fine. I felt fine the whole movie, so just.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
But like dread that I've never felt before, Like other
movies will be like, oh, I feel horrible for now,
but here's another scene where I can kind of breathe
a sigh of relief before the tension ramps up again.
This movie was just constant dread and tension and scariness.
So I walked away in pain. But I was also like, wow,
that was like a beautifully crafted movie as far as

(08:02):
like technical cinematography, editing, sound design, all that kind of stuff.
The performance is incredible, Tony Kolett give the woman an
oscar unbelievable. But also I was like, I never want
to see that movie again. I refuse to cover it
on the Bechdel Cast. It's the one movie that I
won't do. I've publicly said this on the show, and
yet here we are, Here we are, and I've watched

(08:24):
the movie two more times to prep for this episode.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
It took half a decade, you know. It's like we
slowly wore you down. We covered Midsummer a couple of
years ago on the Matreon and.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Now even we're here.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
So what was it? Did you feel any differently revisiting it?

Speaker 3 (08:40):
I felt the same because I forgot enough stuff that
everything was pretty fresh upon the rewatch. The jump scares
still scared the hell on me. The dread was still there,
and I feel horrible right now. I just want everyone
to know. Hell yeah, well the listeners out there, please
get me your sympathy. Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (09:02):
I thought on the sixth watch, I was like, it's
not gonna scare me anymore. I've seen it so many times.
It was Hubris. Still last night, I was just like
in the dark, like, oh God.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
It's happening again. Literally, I mean, yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
I feel like it's been a while since we've had
an episode like this, but this feels like a classic
Bechdel cast dynamic where I think I'm somewhere in the
middle here where I didn't see this movie when it
first came out, but I saw it shortly after, and
I think came on. I was coming, oh, there's a
cat pull on the cat sighting pull. Him and I
both have a black cat and a gray.

Speaker 4 (09:40):
Cat and the hot girls special it really is.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
It's a sacred bot. So, yeah, I didn't see it
in theaters. I wish I had. I would like to
see this movie in theaters, would you?

Speaker 4 (09:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (09:54):
I mean truly, because I haven't seen Bo's Afraid Because
no matter how much I like a director, if the
movie's too long, I'm not seeing it in theaters so long,
I just couldn't. But but ari Astor's first two movies
I think are genuinely really good, and especially with Hereditary,
even though I've seen it fewer times than I've seen Midsummer,
it's I mean, whether you like it or not, it's

(10:15):
a very special, uniquely terrifying movie. The fact that it's
his first feature is absolutely wild. I was watching it
with my boyfriend last night, and it it's almost frustrating
that this, like you know, this like male Otur who
from what we can tell at the time this movie
came out, nothing meaningfully traumatizing has happened to him. He

(10:38):
talks about that in interviews and then he makes this
and you're like, and it's good, Like that's so fucked,
But I think it is. I think it's like a
really special movie. Yeah. The first time I saw it,
I sort of was like, I've seen it all, like
fucking shock me. And it does. And it's like, kind
of in a campy sense, fun to rewatch, where it's like,

(11:01):
you know, on even the first rewatch, it is so
obvious the horrible thing that's going to happen. He hints
at it like a humorous amount of times to the
point where it's like, I think this was my third
viewing of it, and I did laugh when they do
the set of like, and here's this poll in the street? Interesting?
And do you have your EpiPen? Interesting? Everything I like

(11:25):
and dislike about ari Astors in this movie. I've watched
this I've watched it now in three very different emotional spaces.
I was having like a harder time with it this time,
but not because of the movie itself, just because of
sort of like some of the themes of grief and processing.
Like I was having a difficult time with it, but
I also think, Wow, another cat, and that's flee who's

(11:48):
on one? Because Casper is in my bedroom and he's
going to knock things down until he can be with
his brother, until he can be with his other paym on.
But yeah, no, I I feel like this movie has
hit me different every single time. It's always terrifying. This
is the first time I've seen this movie since I
have done a lot of research like Field and books

(12:13):
with spiritualism, we don't read books, not for this show.
But Caitlyn, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I've been cheating
on you.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
I've read You've been reading this whole time, this whole time.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yes, I released a podcast about the history of spiritualism
two years ago and I hadn't watched it since and
so like it was interesting to engage with on that level.
I don't know, this movie is fucking terrifying, and I
it's so it's so hard to talk about for this
specific show because so many things I get to I'm like,
I don't know. On this viewing, I think it's fascinating

(12:48):
and there's so much to talk about about how women
and intergenerational trauma is shown in this story. And I
still feel like it's weirdly a little left something to
be desired and felt like a little trophy on the
on the witch side for me. But the family side
was like, I mean, I feel like that's what ari

(13:09):
Astor does best, is like terrifying family horror dynamics. When
it gets into the witchy stuff, it kind of loses
me a little more. But I'm willing to be swung.
I'm swayable here, Okay, But yeah, I like this movie.
I just but every time I watch it, I feel differently.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
Well, I'm excited to dig in. No, I'm not I
want to go watch Paddington instead.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
Well, fun fact listeners, Caitlin and I are going to
see a twelve one am screening of Despicable be four.
That's right today, So any any dread or sadness is
about to be wiped clean. Your brain will never be
smoother than at two oh one am.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
The best palette cleanser. Imaginable, little guys, but no, I
think this will be a very interesting discussion.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
I'm excited.

Speaker 4 (14:00):
I do have a quick anecdote about the first time
that I saw in theaters.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (14:05):
So there is like this very good like it's not
really a jump scare, but like a slow scare of
like something in the background that slowly comes into focus
towards the end of the movie.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
Yes, Tony Kollet hovering around the ceiling.

Speaker 4 (14:20):
Yeah yeah, yeah that. And when I saw it in
the theaters, around that scene, there is a fly buzzing
through the house and in the like surround sound of
the theater, I literally thought there was a fly in
the theater. So I was looking around being like, where
is this fly? And I missed the first time I

(14:40):
watched it, I missed the initial jump scare, and then
everybody in the theater started gasping, and then I looked
and I was like, what happened? And I was so
mad about that. But I saw it later.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
But this is why I want to see it in theaters,
because it's like, you can enjoy this movie and you
can be terrified this movie at home on your humble roku.
But I feel like you do. And I feel like
that that's true of all of his or all two
of his movies I've seen. It's like the sound design
is very much a part of it.

Speaker 4 (15:11):
The soundtrack as well. Colin Stepson really committed to that.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Unreal It's so good. Oh, this is like Mammy Trauma
the movie, and I like it.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
Mama Trauma. Let's take a quick break and then we'll
come back for the recap and we're back spooky times.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Thank you Kman.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
Okay, here's the recap. I will place a content warning
here for every suicide, for mental illness discussions. There are cults,
there's all kinds of scary things. There's lots of graphic violence. Yeah, truly,
everything that might upset anyone.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
That is one of the things that this movie also
does that I kind of forgot about because it had
been at least three years since I've seen it. That
always bothers me about Midsommar, a movie I generally really
really like. But just like ari Astor loves to prescribe
a specific mental illness to something that he doesn't know

(16:27):
what he's talking about. He's done it at least twice.
I yeah, sound off if he also does it in
bo Is Afraid, but he does it with dissociative identity disorder.
In this movie. He does it with bipolar disorder in
the first couple of minutes of Midsommer, and I just
wish he would stop stop that, because that's like a
horror trope that is very subvertible that he has not done.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
I don't know, well, I mean, I think there's a
much larger discussion to be had around mental illness as
it's depicted in this movie, and how it conflates meant
illness with evil oil. But we'll get there.

Speaker 4 (17:04):
Sorr.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yeah, okay. So in this recap, also, I left out
some stuff just because there's so much detail in this
movie that I had to kind of leave some stuff out. Also,
I realized when I was reading a piece about this
movie that's like summarizing the plot, I'm like, Oh, there's
a whole thing that I didn't even understand or that
didn't connect for me, So this recap might be kind

(17:30):
of shitty.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Well, Pulam, You're welcome to jump in whenever too.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yes. So we open on text on the screen, which
is an obituary of Eileen Lee saying that she is
survived by her daughter Annie, her son in law, and
their two kids. We meet this family at their home.
Annie is played by Tony Kolett, her husband Steve is

(17:59):
gabriel Byrne. Their seventeen year old son Peter played by
Alex Wolfe.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
Aka one half of The Naked Brother's Band Pluma. Did
you watch that show when we were kids? No?

Speaker 4 (18:13):
I did not.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Oh my god, there was a Nickelodeon tween show called
The Naked Brothers Band starring Alex Wolf and his brother
Nat and my brother and I were so invested in
the Naked Brother's Band. Very weird that they called it that. Yeah,
but it was about like two young brothers and like
Alex Wolf is literally I think like eight or nine

(18:36):
in the series, and he's like, I want to play
the drums. And so that was the only thing i'd
ever seen him in, and then he was in Hereditary.
So he's got range, which.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
I know him as kid from Jumanji, the newer Jumanji movies.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Oh see, I kind of forgot about that. Yeah, so yeah,
he's he's got range. She's in all kind I hear though,
based on what Tony Kollett said about working with him,
if I'm recalling correctly, he's an asshole. Oh no, what
can you do? Damn? What can you do?

Speaker 3 (19:07):
So that's Peter played by Alex Wolf, and then their
thirteen year old daughter, Charlie played by Millie Shapiro. They
are getting ready to head to Annie's mother's funeral. We
cut to the funeral where Annie gives a eulogy about
her mother, how Eileen was a very private, secretive person,

(19:30):
and the vibes are weird. At the funeral, there's a
lot of people who Annie doesn't recognize and a strange
symbol on a necklace that Eileen is wearing. And it's
also here where it's established that Charlie has a nut allergy.

Speaker 4 (19:46):
There's also a lot of adults smiling weirdly at Charlie.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yes, yes, there are I love this movie is like
so I liked it this time, Like this movie is
so paranoi at every level, and the fact that everyone's
paranoia or like all of the characters who's were invested
in really like they're paranoia and everyone's worst fear is
true and then some and it almost feels, I don't know,

(20:15):
it felt cathartic on this watch to be like, yeah,
the most fucked up thing I could imagine is going
to happen tomorrow. It's true for everyone.

Speaker 4 (20:24):
It tells you exactly what it is going to be
the entire time, but then does something a little bit
different than what you think it's going to do at
each turn, right.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
It does subvert a lot of horror movie troupes. Like
there's a dog in the movie, Rex the dog icon who.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
He makes it?

Speaker 3 (20:44):
Survives?

Speaker 4 (20:44):
No he doesn't?

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Does not? Wait what happened to the dog?

Speaker 4 (20:49):
No? Is it?

Speaker 1 (20:50):
Viewing number six where you figure out that Rex.

Speaker 4 (20:52):
Didn't make it at the very end, And I was
laughing about this when I was watching it last night.
They just like show Rex's body like in like the
last scene, like very in passing being like just so
you know, we killed the dog too.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
I kind of do think that, like you're I don't know,
arist he's kind of a real one for that, he's
a fake dog, so I know that whatever. I think
that's kind of funny. I thought that, Yeah, like this
the thing that feels like on the rewatch, you're like, oh,
like all of the normal fake outs of like is
this the creepy person but it's never the creepy person

(21:29):
in the first scene, but in this movie, it is
the creepy person in the first scene. They're also the
creepy person in the last.

Speaker 4 (21:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
Well, it's all many creepy people.

Speaker 4 (21:39):
Yeah, in general.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Oh, poor Rex the Dog. I well, I'm glad I
missed it. I did not see the demise of Rex
the Dog.

Speaker 4 (21:46):
And there's a lot of other things going on.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
There. Yes, yeah, Gabriel Burn is fully engulfed in flames
at one point. That's the Those are the moment we're
going to discuss shortly, and that are the two moments
where I still gasp even when I know it's coming.

Speaker 4 (22:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
Oh okay, So the funeral is weird, and then the
family returns home. We learn that Annie is an artist
who creates miniatures, mostly depicting scenes from her life, her
past and present. That night, Annie tucks Charlie in. They
talk about Charlie's relationship with her grandmother, how Charlie was

(22:31):
her grandmother's favorite, though she wanted Charlie to be a boy,
and this is the beginning of a conversation revolving around
gender and payman, so we'll examine that later. Finally, finally, finally,
then Annie goes through some of her mother's things, like

(22:54):
a book called Notes on Spiritualism, and there's a cryptic
note inside to Annie from her mother about sacrifice and reward,
and we're like, what's this about. Then Annie thinks she
sees her mother's ghost. Then we see this miniature that
Annie made depicting her mother trying to breastfeed baby Charlie,

(23:17):
something that Annie had referenced a few moments before, but
we didn't really know to what extent. And then we
see this dirama.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
Basically Anne, I wrote this, Dad that like, if Annie
were a real life artist, I would for sure have
written an annoying paper about her in college, like I
would have been like it would have been some sort
of interesting gateway like miniatures as women experience. Anyone ever

(23:45):
think of this one before? And but I love, I
mean that's like a recurring theme in ari Astro's work too,
is like miniatures inside of miniatures. And I also love
Tony Kollett's like little I don't know, scary magne.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
Like glasses, magnifying glasses.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yeah, her like steampunk I thing I don't know.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
Okay. So then some more freaky stuff happens at school.
Charlie cuts the head off of a dead bird. She
will later make a doll type thing with it. Charlie
takes after her mother as far as like being creative
and artistic expression. Charlie has a whole collection of her

(24:28):
mostly disturbing creations in her room. Also, there are creepy
people lurking around at school and in the woods near
their house. Strange symbols and words are popping up on
the floors and walls of the house. The grandmother's grave
apparently was desecrated. There's also this like light shimmer thing

(24:53):
that we'll see now and then that kind of moves
about autonomously. We don't really know what it is at first.
Is it Payman? I don't know. Then Annie goes to
a grief support group. We learn that Annie had a
very strained relationship with her mother, and that Annie's mother, father,

(25:16):
and brother all had pretty severe mental illnesses. Peter then
gets invited to a party and Annie makes him take
Charlie along. It seems like Charlie might have difficulty socializing
with other kids, so Annie is like insistent that she
go and socialize.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
Right, She's thirteen, so like, show me a socially functional
thirteen year old.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
This is also after she's been like caught just like
following a light barefoot in the yard and Annie needs
to do this like project for this gallery and she's like,
oh my god, why are you outside barefoot? I can't
deal with this right now?

Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, like, someone take charge of her. Although every time
with Annie in this seed, I'm like, come on, mom,
where she's she's like, okay, my seventeen year old stoner
son definitely don't smoke weed. And You're like, I mean,
I know it happens, but I'm like, come on, come on,

(26:19):
I mean you know the consequence is outsized, but yeah,
what you know, right, I don't know how she expected
a neutral result.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
Right, Okay. So at the party, Charlie eats cake that
turns out to have nuts, and she has a severe
allergic reaction. So Peter rushes her out. He's speeding to
a hospital, and then we get the scene where Charlie

(26:48):
can't breathe, so she rolls down the window and sticks
her head out of the window. There's something in the
road at that very moment, so Peter swerves to miss it,
causing Charlie to be decapitated by a telephone poll.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
And then this is the point where everyone in the
movie is like, oh, oh, so it's that kind of movie.

Speaker 4 (27:10):
Yeah, the rules have changed, the shift has happened.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yeah, I mean, because these are fake people, I feel
comfortable saying that's fucking awesome, Like you just don't see
it coming, and it's just like it's so no matter
how many times you see it, it's shocking the way
that it's done. I like, I don't know, because I
didn't I've of the three times i've seen it, I
only actually watched that the first time because I didn't

(27:36):
know it was coming. Now I know to look away,
But my memory of it is that it's very it's
like almost campy practical effectie, which is probably the smarter decision,
But I honestly don't know, because when I watched it yesterday,
I was like ah No.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
It's not that camp. I mean maybe, but it also
gets such a visceral, horrific response that it feels.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
Well as a horror head. Is it goofy or is it?

Speaker 4 (28:03):
I feel like, so this is not the thing that
I also feel like what scares people is really subjective,
So what scares me is not like what scares all
horror people. But this did not scare me. This wasn't
the I was like, oh, but I feel like it
was effective because and I've thought about this a lot.
Why people get shocked, it's because I think you have

(28:25):
so much anxiety from the like allergic reaction, anaphylactic shock,
whatever's happening with the nuts, and you're worried that that
is going to kill her, and you're really really focused
on is she going to make it to the hospital.
The music is also going off, and so this thing
is now like a second not forecasted, well forecasted if
you have seen it, but not otherwise forecasted thing that

(28:48):
just like happens really suddenly. And I think the scariest
part is because you don't see it. You just see
his reaction and you feel like the weight of it,
and then you get to hear and see everyone's reactions.
And then the jump scare is when they show you
the rotting head on the street.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yes, that does happen too, which is which is somehow
like I don't know why that was like less. I
don't know. Maybe it's because I saw this movie after
I'd already seen Midsommar and it's just like, yeah, he's
gonna do this. He loves fly on head. And they
keep returning to that image too, of like the symbolism
of like a rotting person.

Speaker 4 (29:29):
Well also the answer like a paymon thing.

Speaker 3 (29:33):
Like there's so much I don't so many references. I
don't get. You do see her head come off, though,
unless I watched like a director's cut or something, you
see like her her head hit the pole and come off.

Speaker 4 (29:49):
I thought it was like a silhouette.

Speaker 3 (29:50):
I mean, it's enough that you like, definitely see what happens.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Sure I haven't. I haven't voluntarily watched it in five years,
so I cannot speak. I just but I know whatever
I saw the first time was enough that I was like, look,
I can't, I'm not gonna do it. But that's part
of why I like watching card movies is the parts
that are impossible to watch right right.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
The point is though, that Peter is in utter shock
after this, and he just kind of drives home and
goes to bed, hoping that it didn't actually happen. But
the next morning Annie discovers Charlie's body in the car.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
That's the most horrific moment of the movie to me
is watching that long shot of Peter in bed and
just like seeing him internally count down the moments until
his life is over. Basically, yes, it's just so horrible.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
It's so horrible. And then you see the shot of
Charlie's severed head. There's ants crawling all over it. It's
truly like one of the most haunting images I've ever
seen in a movie.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
I hope Millie Shapiro, if she wanted it.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
Got that head about the prop head.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
If I was her, if I was like a child
actor in a horror movie, I'd be like, give me
the head. I want the head.

Speaker 4 (31:09):
Also, like that guttural scream is like something that Ari
Astor used again in Midsommar, and it is like so
effective because it touches like the deepest, like animal part
of you that like feels aversion to like the warning
scream of another human.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah, for sure. I mean that without Tony Kollett's like ability, Like,
this movie is way less effective if anyone's half assing
that role because it's like she in like however, many
scenes she's like making sounds and expressions that like almost

(31:51):
feel inhuman but also but really human or maybe superhuman
whatever it is, like, it's just it's it's terrifying.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
Like again, give her an Oscar such an incredible performance.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
She's awesome, and this was an even I mean I
thought of I guess, like you know, Tony Kleett was
such a successful character actor at this time, I think
you would rarely see her outside of TV in like
leading roles. But I think I first saw her in
The Sixth Sense, where she was also playing a horror
movie mom, but very different.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
But yeah, she does a great job communicating the just
grief and devastation that she and her whole family are feeling.
She is your mother, She is your mother. Everyone is devastated.
Peter is very guilt stricken. An he goes back to
the support group where she meets a woman named Joan

(32:47):
played by Anne Dowd, whose son and grandson died recently.
She gives Annie her number in case Annie needs someone
to talk to. Annie and Joan then get together and
Annie tells her a story about an instance that happened
a few years back where while Annie was sleepwalking, she

(33:10):
apparently doused herself and Peter and Charlie in paint thinner
and was about to light them on fire while she
was sleeping, but woke up when she struck the match.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
I do love how this information is introduced, because it's like,
there's so many critical, horrific pieces of information introduced mid
Tony Collette Ramble, and then she just always keeps going
and you're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what what
did you say? What did you do? It's great, it's great,
but to her, it's like, so this.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
Happened, and she's describing how she was just as shocked
as her kids were, but Peter has held it against
her ever since.

Speaker 4 (33:49):
I feel like this movie does a great, like, I
don't know, representation of how like we have our own
family histories and our personal histories that we think are
totally normal and downplay, and it's not until you tell
it to another person that you realize that it's kind
of messed up. And this happens repeatedly that she does,
and the other person is like the viewer who's like,

(34:12):
hang on, but you never get to hang on because
they just keep they roll past it.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
They just keep barreling.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
That's true part of what I am really like drawn
to about Annie's character. She's like the most extreme example
of that. And you can see so much in her
own art that she is trying to process these things.
But it's not clear if she feels it feels like,
at least to be at different. At most points, it

(34:37):
feels like she is kind of in denial that her
art is a way of processing her life. She's just
sort of like, this is my work and this is
my life, when they're so clearly interconnected, but she's using
her I don't know. I'm really excited to talk about
like women in art as a way of like synthesizing
your life, because I just I don't know. I think

(34:58):
this movie does it in a really interesting way because
in most ways, when Annie's talking about her art, whether
it's to her husband, who's really the only person we
see her talk to about it, she is sort of like, well,
what do you mean this is my work? Like this
is a this is a neutral presentation and just like
the most fucked up thing you've ever seen, and you're like, Annie, Annie, Annie,

(35:21):
this is right.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
This happens. This happens next in the story where Annie
is making a miniature of Charlie's accident with the head
on the ground and everything, and her husband Steve comes in.
He's like what the fuck Annie? And she's like what
this isn't He's like, don't let Peter see that, and
she's like, what this isn't about him? This is a

(35:43):
neutral presentation of the accident, and it's like, rip Steve.

Speaker 4 (35:47):
She hates therapy, and it shows.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Steve is processing grief honestly, like you know, rip to Steve.
He did his best. He did his best. He was like,
consider our son, and Annie was like, no, no.

Speaker 4 (36:06):
My husband and I were talking about at what point
would we have left each other in the situation. Uh huh,
We'll get to it. But there's an outburst that I
think I would have been like, we're going to my
mom's and you need to go work that one out.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
M yeah, yeah, like he would have been the tricky
thing is like their kid. But it's like, if I'm Steve.
I also thought that this is like, if I'm Steve,
I'm like, you know, Peter and I. It's tricky though,
because then you're leaving Annie by herself and t'sau without
a support system. But it's like, you gotta It seems
like Steve is trying to do the right thing, which

(36:43):
just think about his kid, but he's kind of thwarted
at every turn when it comes to trying to act
in the best interests of his kid. Not to say
that he couldn't have done better, but he was doing
his best if it was just the two of them.
If I'm Steve, I'm like, I'm going to Disneyland, Like
I don't know, I'm going, I'm going somewhere.

Speaker 4 (37:03):
I feel like the turning point really was I think
that she was becoming harmful to the kid's healing process,
and you know, like I feel like it would be
like for the sake of the kid that I would
want to get out of that situation.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
The scene which we're coming up on soon. But when
she like forces them to participate in a seance with her,
and Peter's like very visibly upset, It's like, Okay, we
need to maybe not be doing this.

Speaker 4 (37:33):
Tony Kolett that was my husband's point.

Speaker 5 (37:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean because Steve really does try to, like,
you know, he goes with her as far as he
could go before drawing the line, and by that point it's.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
Unfortunately too late. But I don't know, yeah, I you know,
like we're not parents. I can't say for sure, but
it just seems like Steve was trying to do his best.
And there's an interesting like choice in and maybe it's
just like logistical our writing choice from ari Astor where
Steve is like kind of a flat character in a

(38:08):
lot of ways, where we're not led to believe that
Steve has a support system to turn to. It's just
everything is taking place inside of this miniature, and everything
outside of the miniature is a little bit nebulous and
confusing because we're not led to believe that Steve has
family members or friends that he could really go to

(38:28):
or that he feels comfortable going to about this, and
so he's also kind of a prisoner in this dynamic,
which is a real thing, just thankfully not pam on real.

Speaker 4 (38:40):
Right, Yeah, isolation is really important for this.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
So the next thing is a dinner scene where Peter
and Annie yell at each other and blame each other
for the accident, and no one accepts any kind of
accountability for any thing. This is something that Annie is
kind of lashing out about, and so things are very

(39:06):
very tense among the family.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
Tony Collette is so good in that scene.

Speaker 4 (39:11):
And it's amazing, I'm your mother.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
It's a meme for a reason.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
Then Annie runs into Joan again, who had recently met
a spiritual medium who does seances, and the medium conjured
the spirit of Joan's grandson, and so Joan is trying
to convince Annie to come over, and she does, and
Joan performs a seance and summons her grandson again. Annie

(39:40):
gets freaked out and leaves. Then we see a scene
where Annie has some scary dreams. She has sleepwalked into
Peter's room again. She lets it slip that she never
wanted to be his mother, that her mother pressured her
into having kids. Annie tried to have a misc It
turns out that Annie telling Peter all of this was

(40:03):
also just a dream, but it's not clear if that
is actually something that happened or not because it's framed
as a dream, so we don't totally know, but based
on the events of the story, we can maybe glean
that that was true for Annie. Not sure, but anyway.
Then Annie gets Steve and Peter together and performs a seance.

(40:25):
They are skeptical and upset. Peter is very scared, and
it seems like Annie summons Charlie's spirit using something that
belonged to Charlie, which is a notebook that she used
to sketch in and this summoning of the spirit seems
to work, but then things go wrong where Charlie kind

(40:48):
of embodies Annie and it's weird and scary.

Speaker 4 (40:52):
My favorite line from the movie is when Peter in
that scene is going can't you feel it the air flexing?

Speaker 1 (40:58):
And I was like, ooh, it is like the most
like accurate but also like teenage boy way of describing
what is happening. M h.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
And then things really start to fall apart for the family.
From this point on, Annie discovers that notebook of Charlie's,
where her spirit seems to be drawing a bunch of
pictures of Peter with his eyes crossed out. Not a
great omen. Annie thinks she might be able to stop

(41:34):
all of this if she burns the notebook, but when
she tries to throw it in the fire. Her arm
catches fire, as if she and the notebook share some link.
Then Annie goes through her mother's stuff again and finds
photos of her mother with Joan. Turns out that Joan
knew Eileen all along. There are photos depicting them participating

(41:58):
in some kind of ritual. There are strange symbols. There
are books on the occult, and Annie reads a passage
about someone named King Payman, one of the eight Kings
of Hell, and he needs a vulnerable host to inhabit

(42:18):
or possess, specifically a male host, and we're like, hmm, Peter,
question mark. Then Annie goes up to the attic, where
she finds the rotten corpse of possibly her dead mother,
although the head has been removed so we can't really

(42:39):
id her at this time now. Meanwhile, at school, Peter,
as if possessed by some sinister spirit, bashes his own
face against his desk.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
This is another case of classic ari astor what's the
most fucked up thing I could think to do right now?

Speaker 4 (42:58):
This is also right after he sees his own reflection
in like a cabinet, and the reflection is smiling at him.
That really scared me, I feel scared thinking about it now.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
I feel like that was used for the trailer when
they were promoting this movie. Yeah, I kind of remember that.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Anyway, Steve brings home an unconscious Peter, and then Annie
runs up and is trying to explain how she thinks
that burning Charlie's notebook will sever whatever sinister connection has
been created. She begs Steve to burn the book, knowing
that she will combust and burn because of this link.

(43:36):
He won't do it. He wants to call the police.
He thinks that Annie is having a mental break, so
she throws the book in the fire again, thinking it's
going to make her burst into flames. But surprise, it's Steve,
her husband, who combusts and dies instead.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
I did not see this coming, Oh, and never see
it coming, no matter how many times. And you're just like, yeah, Steve, Steve,
you should have gone to Disneyland. Steve, you should have
taken Alex Wolf to Disneyland, and then you know we
would have been.

Speaker 4 (44:16):
But he loved her. You know, it's broke my heart.
This is a love story.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
Actually, yeah, no, absolutely where it's it makes me sad.
It makes me sad. Yeah, that like he was trying
to do right by his family by Annie because also
it seems like, I mean, just based on what we
know about this family, that he has had to stand

(44:43):
by her through. Really, I mean, we know that her
kids had a weird to bad relationship with her due
to the whole almost lighting them all on fire thing,
And it seems like he has been put in the
position repeatedly of having to be the like calm, most

(45:03):
calming presence in the room. But it's like dipped so
far that he is, you know, I don't think intentionally,
but like his need to appease everybody and be present
for everybody is ultimately like what brings his downfall and
the downfall of like other people, because it's like he's

(45:25):
never quite decisive. He almost emails a therapist saying she's
a girl. He almost does a lot of things, but
because of his love for his wife and his fear
of hurting her, like, he never quite takes the step
he needs to protect his kids. I don't know, it's
so fucked. I don't know what I would do if

(45:47):
I if I'm Steve, I'll be honest.

Speaker 4 (45:49):
I am.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
Hard to say when your family is being possessed by
one of the eight Kings of Hell. You just don't
know how to handle such a Wait, you won't know
until you're there, right.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
Yeah, yeah, And and this will happen to all three
of us at some point. This is a part of
the human experience that goes without saying.

Speaker 4 (46:10):
I'm alone in my house and all the lights are off.
I might actually stand up to go turn some lights.
And I'm gonna go turn the hallway light on really fast.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
This is beautiful.

Speaker 4 (46:27):
I I'm back.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Okay, lights are on. We feel safe. So we've just
seen Steve burst into flames and burn to death. Annie
is shocked by this for a brief moment, but then
seems to kind of disassociate. Then we cut to Peter
waking up in his bed. He goes downstairs and discovers
his charred father. He sees a creepy naked man lurking

(46:53):
in a doorway. This is where we see Tony Klet.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
You know.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Annie perched up by the ceiling as if she flew
or floated up there. Then she lunges at Peter and
chases after him. He locks himself in the attic, but
then Annie is in the attic with him, sawing her
own head off with piano wire. So that's interesting.

Speaker 4 (47:16):
So sick.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
Peter jumps out the window, but then that light shimmer
thing that we saw before seems to enter him and
compels him to go up to the treehouse that I
forgot to mention until now, But we have established this
treehouse earlier. We got a Chekhof's treehouse, and now it's
paying off because he goes up there and what's in

(47:41):
the treehouse, Well, it's a bunch of stuff. It's members
of a cult that worship King Payman. It's Charlie's head
on a statue of King Payman. It's the decapitated bodies
of Peter's mom and Grandma Joe is there and she's saying, hey, Charlie,

(48:04):
we've I'm quoting the dialogue here, we've corrected your first
female body and we gave you this healthy male host.
And then she goes on to say, you are payment.
We bind ourselves to you. Give us your knowledge and
your wisdom and your riches. Hail payment the end.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
So yeah, cute Joni Mitchell's song, and.

Speaker 3 (48:30):
We're like, oh, wild song to end on the part
that I didn't fully get was that that Charlie was
Payman the whole time, and that her decapitation was this
kind of planned out thing from the cult, Like the
accident wasn't actually an accident. They the cult like made

(48:51):
this happen so that Payman could be transferred from Charlie's
body into Peter's body. And so that's the part that
I didn't quite get that, like the accident was not
actually an accident. I don't know if that was more
clear to other people.

Speaker 4 (49:09):
But now, if you, I mean later on subsequent watches,
you notice the symbol of the cult is on, Like
on the way to the party, they pass a telephone
pole and the symbol from the cult is on, like
embossed in the telephone pole. Yeah, but on my first
watch or even second, I didn't notice that necessarily. So

(49:31):
it's pretty like I feel like the world building elements
are given really minimally, and all of the stuff with
the cult is happening really backgrounded, and the focus is
really on the family. And maybe this is why you
felt that the the cult stuff was maybe or like
the witchy stuff was maybe less developed, because it seems

(49:52):
to be kind of besides the point and really being
used as an as an engine to heighten this family struggle.

Speaker 3 (50:00):
Yeah, I think that's a pretty fair assessment.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
Yeah, I mean, well, now that we'll let's take a book, Brazer,
let's take a break and come back and get into.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
It, and we're back. Where to begin.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
I kind of want to start with the witchier stuff
in here, because yeah, I agree plumbit that it's like,
it feels like the supernatural elements of this are secondary
and almost like used to amplify the family dynamics that
are at the core of this. It's weird that this

(50:42):
movie came out in twenty eighteen and because of like
the cultural moment of early twenty eighteen. This is right
after the Me Too movement begins, and so there's a
lot of takes on this movie that feel a little
dated in that sense, not to say that it is
like inaccurate, but that I don't know, like, it was

(51:03):
interesting going through the initial wave of reception, some of
which I think was really insightful and some of which
I feel like was like a little bad faith in
how the material was received, because I think at that
point it's like, oh, so we're saying all women are witches,
and you're like, well, why is that a bad thing. Yeah,
I guess on my end, like just based vaguely on

(51:24):
what I know about spiritualism. What I thought was interesting
is whatever. Spiritualism is a late nineteenth century movement that
went well into the twentieth century. It was a religious
movement that women were at the center of. And there
are so many flaws that came with this religion. That

(51:47):
are the flaws like at the center of a lot
of religions where it was you know, taking and sort
of mutating indigenous beliefs and reclaiming it as if they
understood it, which was not true. You know, this is
very much like a religion that was shaped and put
on display by white women in the late nineteenth century
into the twentieth century. But it is a rare religious

(52:11):
movement that was driven by women, and that was very
threatening to the religious institutions at the time because spiritualism
intersected with all of these progressive movements. It intersected with abolitionism,
like Frederick Douglass like fucked around with spiritualism. Like there's
a lot of history that is like it was at

(52:34):
its core a flawed but essentially progressive religion that women
were at the center of and so there was a
vested interest as this religion sort of continued to develop
to prove that it was made up, which like depending
on how whatever this is like in a very casually

(52:56):
mean way to view religion, it's all made up. But
there was a vested interest in like, no, this religion
is extra made up because women are at the center
of it, and so the heads of and and a
lot of it was made of and I also still
kind of believe in it anyways. But you know, there

(53:17):
were the seance rituals that we sort of see in this,
the idea of like table ceremonies, versions of the what
would eventually become the Ouiji board, but you know, table movements,
glass movements. All of this stuff was very inherent to
what this was in the nineteenth century and a very

(53:40):
mainstream way at one point, like Mary Todd Lincoln like
brought in the creators of spiritualism to try to bring
Abe back, like it was a mainstream movement for a
while that was shut down when it was you know
like oh well this isn't quite you know, actually the
supernatural accessing it as if any religion in the world

(54:02):
has been like, actually we have the ghosts like, no
one has the ghosts, but we all have the ghosts.
That's why we all have the ghost But I just
I thought it was interesting that they went in on
this religion that was driven by white American women, specifically
for this generational trauma story. It like, I think it works.

(54:25):
I just I don't know the way it's executed with
the whole payment thing, I don't know. It felt a
little like YadA YadA YadA to me. But also I
know that there are six hour analyzes and a lot
that I missed. I just thought spiritualism was like a
cool entry point, and I didn't super love where he

(54:46):
went with it. I guess I don't know what does
everyone think.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
I mean, my one of my biggest issues with the movie,
and I remember thinking this after I left the theater
in twenty eighteen when I saw it then, was the
what felt to me like a conflation of mental illness
and evil demons and kings of hell and that kind

(55:12):
of stuff where I think the movie is suggesting. And
I will just put a disclaimer here to say that
when a movie scares me so badly like this, I
have a hard time thinking about it intellectually and critically.
Just because my brain gets so scared. I feel like

(55:33):
I had a similar problem on the episode we did
on The Ring, where I'm like, well, I don't know
how I feel about this movie from an intersectional feminist lens,
because I'm too scared and my brain doesn't work right now.
But the kind of general thing I feel is that again,
the movie does a very harmful thing of conflating mental

(55:56):
illness with evil and demon And you know, there's this
idea throughout the movie of something being hereditary and being
inherited from your family, and it kind of feels like
the movie posits the question, is it mental illness that's
being passed down through the generations or is it Payman

(56:18):
that's being passed down like you inherit the demon king
that your mother dedicated her life to, whether you like
it or not. And I mean, I think you could
also make the argument that it's not conflation, it's allegory,
like Payman is a metaphor for mental illness the way
that you can read like the Babaduk is a metaphor

(56:41):
for postpartum depression. And I also see a reading of
the specific mental illnesses that Annie describes her family members
as having when she says, like, my father had this
and died as a result, my brother had this and
died by suicide. But what was being perceived and diagnosed

(57:02):
as mental illness in Annie's father and brother was actually,
I lean, trying to put paymen inside them. It was
never a mental illness. It was the demon all along.
And I see those interpretations, but I still can't help
but feel that what the movie is doing here is
very malicious, especially because the specific mental illnesses that are

(57:25):
mentioned are ones that are very often demonized by media
and horror movies, ones that have huge stigmas attached to them.
So I think the movie is conflating mental illness and
evil in a very harmful and stigmatizing way.

Speaker 4 (57:45):
I know what you mean, but I almost feel like, So,
there's there's two places where I feel this, and I
absolutely see what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
Here.

Speaker 4 (57:56):
Is one in like the family History of mental Illness,
and they really get very specific with the types of
mental illness, but then don't really go into too much
detail aside from like the few tidbits that like Tony
spits out in like a ramble of hers and it's
like a very classic horror trope. Slash like thing that

(58:18):
happened in real life, that when people are mentally ill
or struggling with mental illness that is like affecting the
way they interact with other people. That like, historically people
have been like it's satan or like it's the devil.
And also this comes up over and over again in
horror movies about possession, where they initially think it is

(58:40):
a mental or physical like illment, but it's satan that's
like hysterical or like exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (58:47):
That's a lot of like I felt like the most
effective moment for me every time, even when you know,
like it's hard for your heart to not be with
Steve where he's like what like, but because he is
so thoroughly convinced of what is going on, he is
not able to believe his wife about what is going on.

(59:09):
And she is right, like right, you can argue with
her methods all day long, you know, but she's right.
She is telling him what is happening, and he doesn't
believe her. And I think that that is like a
running theme throughout this movie of I mean, that is
part of why Charlie is gone. She is trying to

(59:30):
advocate for herself she's trying to say, like I don't
want to go to this party. I don't want to
be here. I'm sick, and like by the time someone
takes it seriously, it's already too late. And like, I
think the same thing. You kind of see the same
thing happen to her mother where they are both suffering.

(59:51):
And I agree that like the way that already asked her,
you know, deals with explicit mental illness in general, I
think is just like really messy and I just personally
don't like it. But what I thought, I don't know, plumber,
let me know you. I think that like what he
was trying to do, and I am kind of on

(01:00:12):
like how effective it is, but like what he's trying
to do is almost like a comment on like hysteria
and how women are so often told like no, you're
not telling the truth. Something bad isn't happening, something is
wrong with you, and there is a name for it.

(01:00:32):
And the problem with that is like that does invalidate
a lot of mental illness and talk around mental illness.
But the core of what he's saying I don't disagree with,
and there is especially because he's talking about spiritualism, it
feels like grounded in some historical precedent too, of just
like I just don't like what you're saying, and so

(01:00:55):
I need it to go away, and I need it
to go away by any means necessary. I don't know,
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:01:02):
Yeah, what I was thinking about with that is that
I wonder if the movie is trying to be like
what if it was the thing that you were afraid
it was, or what if the uncanny thing? What if
it was real and it was not explained by the
mental illness, And it's kind of like interacting with the

(01:01:25):
history and the tropes in that way. But I agree,
it's kind of like it's a little half baked. But
I think the aspect that kind of graded on me
was Charlie specifically, who exhibits like maybe having some issues
like socially that might like need some like therapeutic intervention potentially,

(01:01:48):
but it's because she's a demon. That's like where I
was like, Okay, well, you know, just because someone has
trouble making friends with kids their age and like she
has like a very stilted way of talking, doesn't mean
that they are an incarnation of like the ninth demon

(01:02:09):
of Hell or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
Socially awkward thirteen year old girl. If all of them
are pam On, we're fucked.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:02:21):
I was reading different people's writing about this movie through
the lens of disability and ableism. The movie doesn't say
anything specific about Charlie, but some people were reading Charlie
as being autistic based on various traits and behaviors she displays.
And then separate from that, the actor who plays Charlie,

(01:02:43):
Millie Shapiro, was born with clydal cranial dysplasia, which affects
a person's bones and teeth often affects their height and
facial structure. So to characterize Charlie in this way, that
can be read as being neurodivergent. And this character is
played by an actor who has a facial difference, and

(01:03:06):
that's the character who has a demon living inside them
and has had this demon in them since, like right
after they were born. Has very ablest implications. But I
also saw examples of people with autism saying they felt
represented by Charlie, regardless of the implication that her atypical

(01:03:27):
behavior and vocal stemming, for example, are actually a demon
displaying these behaviors. So again open to many reads and interpretations.
I also wanted to point out that there is ablest
language surrounding Charlie, not directed at her exactly, but that

(01:03:51):
scene where Peter's crush says Charlie drew a picture of her,
and then this girl uses an ablest slur to describe
how Charlie depicted her in the drawing, which I feel
is still a veiled ablest insult toward Charlie. All this
to say, there's a lot happening in this movie regarding

(01:04:12):
implications surrounding mental illness and disability and neurodivergence and whether
or not those things are actually a demon inhabiting someone's body,
and none of it sits well with.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
Me, right, Yeah, Like that's I feel like where the
issue is. It just kind of like interrupts I don't know,
it interrupts part of what I like about this movie,
which is, you know, it's a little absurd and like
way over the top because it's fucking hereditary. But the
idea that like this line of women have been far

(01:04:50):
more powerful than anyone ever gave them credit for because
of the way that people kind of systemically dismiss women's
con concerns, women's ideas and I also feel like it
kind of ties into you know, like the fact that
Annie is an artist, and that is like doesn't seem

(01:05:12):
like it's taken super seriously by anyone in her family
or anyone around her. And I don't know. I like,
on its face the fact that like, you know, these whatever,
three four generations of women have been you know, dismissed
as very sick, when in fact they were extremely powerful

(01:05:33):
and misunderstood. I like that theme. I think it gets
very messy. I don't think ari Astor, a first time
male director, is the one to be able to present
this in a nuanced and thoughtful way. But I like
the core idea of it. But that's all a little
like interrupted by having Charlie be the demon, like why why? Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:05:59):
But at the same time, I keep thinking about what
you had said earlier, that like what if your worst
fear and like the worst thing you're thinking is actually true.
This is like what if that child who's behaving oddly,
it's actually because they're that like worst fear, like they're evil.
So it's like that over and over again with all
of these different things.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
I also don't think that Annie, like I, you know, whatever, narratively,
Annie is not a great parent, Like she's not, and
it seems like, you know, her mom was also a
pretty like horrifically bad parent, and there is like I
mean hereditary hat like has to do with this paymon shit,

(01:06:41):
but it also has to do with behavioral patterns like
Annie was. It seemed like went through I mean, we
know went through a lot of really traumatic stuff when
she was a kid, and the attitude in the house
is we don't talk about it. And we see her
repeat that pattern when she loses her mother and then

(01:07:02):
she loses her daughter. She never talks to Peter, and
I think, you know, like you can go any which way,
but like in this family, Steve is the more emotionally
intelligent parent and he's not great, but he's trying. And
you just see Annie for all of these reasons that
are understandable, but in terms of showing up for her kid,

(01:07:27):
she doesn't. And like that scene between Peter and Annie
at the dinner table is so gut wrenching because you
can just feel ugh, like it like makes me feel
sick when I watch it because you can just see
like both of these characters want it to be someone's fault.
And the truth is somewhere in the middle, which is

(01:07:50):
why it kind of bugs me. Bugged me, and I
think still bugs me that at the end we're kind
of given a prescriptive answer as to why what happened happened.
It did surprise me that we were given such a
clear cut answer, but I sort of I guess, just
like personally, I kind of preferred the stomach churning uncertainty

(01:08:14):
of like why did this happen? Sure Annie's choice is
contributed to it, and Peter's choice is contributed to it,
but there's no clear answer, there's no clear fault. But
the end of the.

Speaker 3 (01:08:26):
Movie, ultimately it was the cult.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
Well that's why. That's sort of why I don't like
the witchy stuff towards the end, because it like it
gives you. I thought it just kind of gave me
more answers than I wanted in a way that felt
almost like a little bit less haunting at the end
to be like, oh, it was actually, you know, like
the scary Treehouse cult that this was predetermined many moons ago,

(01:08:52):
and like so now, I mean, not that it ends
great for Peter, but you know, he can whatever rest
assured that it wasn't his fault, which I feel like
is almost a worse punishment than becoming the devil himself.
Is always wondering like was this my fault? Like that's
one of the most I think like horrible actual things

(01:09:14):
that can happen to a person is having to wonder that.

Speaker 4 (01:09:17):
Right, Yeah, there's so much about blame in this movie,
and I have in my notes. I have the word
blame in big letters with a square around it because
it comes up over and over again and how like
blame can like distort relationships. But sure, I kind of
feel the opposite of you on the committing to an answer,

(01:09:42):
like a clear cut answer that there was a cult
and there was a demon and all of this was
I feel like so much horror that like is allegorical
or like trying to represent or talk about things like
commits too hard and the metaphor is like too neat clean,
and this one is like messy a little bit, and

(01:10:05):
like none of the none of the representations, like feel
are like one hundred percent. We can't definitively be like
this is about grief, or like this is about inherited trauma,
or this is about mental illness or anything like that
like all of that stuff is like in the soup,
and what makes it cohesive is that there is actually

(01:10:28):
a plot and a reason rooted in like the reality
of the movie for all of these things to be happening,
and ultimately, like all of the characters are kind of
helpless in the face of the larger powers. And I
think that's where I enjoy horror is just like when

(01:10:50):
it lets go of the notion that we as like
little people with our little dramas, have any sway on
these like huge, old, supernatural things that are happening around us.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
Yeah, sometimes I wish I could be like, yeah, the depression,
I'm constantly feeling that's just the seventh King of Hell
weaseling his way into my brain.

Speaker 1 (01:11:18):
Maybe that's a personal thing because I would rather blame
myself and my mom for those things.

Speaker 4 (01:11:26):
But that's like in a family drama, it's like it's
yourself and the mom is the problem. And then that's
like the lovely thing about horror, just like genre in general,
it's like, but actually, there's like this third, sinister, magical
thing that has nothing to do with you guys.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
Yeah, I guess that's personal. I just wish that there
was maybe. I mean, I don't even object to like
the inclusion of the cult. It's like you almost kind
of get a second movie out of it. But I
just wish maybe there was I don't know, Yeah, this
is strictly a personal thing, but I wish there was
a little more like leeway left for You're not totally sure,

(01:12:02):
because cults are created by people, but this movie would
have you believed because you see, like whatever spiritualism had
sound off. You see that Tony Collette checks all of
the classic spiritualist tricks. She looks under the table, she
looks for this, she looks for that, and so if
you've seen any seance rig, you know it's clear that

(01:12:23):
like this is real, and that is like confirming the
existence of this magic. I just I don't know, Yeah,
I wish that that door was kind of left open
a little bit. I've found myself like really drawn to
like horror stories that let you have a little bit
of both. I read a book recently, The September House

(01:12:46):
by Carissa Orlando. It's a really good haunted house book
that I feel like kind of like lets you have
your cake and eat it too, where it is like
a story that is grounded in a woman going through
a mental health crisis and also ghosts surreal and like
both of these things exist. I don't know, that's it

(01:13:06):
was my ideal horror story where mental illness is a
real and present force and also the supernatural is fucking
with us at all times, and if you combine the two,
you're fucked, which is maybe just like what I was
looking for more from the conclusion of Hereditary then than

(01:13:27):
there is. But yeah, again that's like a personal thing.

Speaker 4 (01:13:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:31):
I mean, if the like cult and payment stuff and
all the magic and mysticism is taken out of this movie,
it would just be a really effective family drama about
grief and generational trauma.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
You gotta have the goals.

Speaker 3 (01:13:49):
Yeah, But I do like that there is a lot
of emphasis on blame and trust too, where like the
families having troubled each other and where they can't trust
each other, they are throwing blame around at each other.
So and these are like things that are very familiar
in a lot of family dynamics, So I think it's

(01:14:12):
interesting that the movie explores those and I think that's
why this movie has like a longer lasting legacy and
is beloved by its fans more than a pretty like
straightforward ghost story movie that fails to kind of dig
deeper into you know, a character's internal struggle and you know,

(01:14:34):
complicated family dynamics, which a lot of horror movies fail
to do just because it's like it's a ghost story
or it's a monster story and you know, not really
digging deep into anything actually like interesting or thematic about
the human experience or the human condition. I want to
talk about payment and gender because.

Speaker 1 (01:14:58):
Yeah, okay, I guess there's something.

Speaker 3 (01:15:01):
There's something here in the text of the movie. So
we learned we hear early on in a conversation between
Charlie and her mom Annie. It's right after the grandmother's funeral,
and Charlie says, Grandma wanted me to be a boy,
and we don't really get any context for that or

(01:15:23):
any other information aside.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
I feel like we're just like left to play on
the classic successor thing.

Speaker 4 (01:15:30):
I don't know, Yeah, I feel like having grown up
in a really patriarchal like family that my grandmother also
was like I wish you were a boy when I
was first born, So I like totally like breathed past that.
I was like, oh, that's normal patriarchy stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):
Right, Yeah, it could definitely be chalked up to that.
And then as the movie goes on, and especially by
the end, you find out why the grandma won her
to be a boy because of the whole payment thing.
And when Annie is kind of rifling through the book
about King Payman, there's this passage that I paused on

(01:16:13):
and wrote down as much of it as I could,
but it's basically explaining that there's some text because if
you look up payment on you know, scholarly journal Wikipedia,
this is a thing Like this isn't an invention for
the movie Hereditary, there's lore.

Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
I think a lot of horror movies have like encountered
different versions of these guys.

Speaker 3 (01:16:35):
Yeah, but there's apparently some text called the Goaisha or something,
and the book that Annie reads from says the Goisha
itself makes no mention of King Payman's face. Then there's
like text that's cut off other documentation describes him as
having a woman's face, while something something some other text

(01:16:56):
refers to him using strictly masculine pronouns. As result, the
sexes of the hosts have varied, but the most successful
incarnations have been with men and it is documented that
King Payment has become livid and vengeful when offered a
female host. For these reasons, it is imperative to remember
that King Payment is a male, thus covetous of a

(01:17:19):
male human body. So we find out, okay, this Payment
worshiping cult needs a male host to put Paymin into.
And then again through some things that are implied throughout
the movie, we realize that Payman has been inhabiting Charlie,

(01:17:42):
or had been inhabiting Charlie, but King Payment wasn't happy
about that. He wants a male host. So that's why
they orchestrate this whole thing to put Paymin into Peter's body.
I don't know why that didn't just happen originally.

Speaker 4 (01:18:02):
Oh, they they explained that there's a part where I
think it's in the in the like grief group therapy
thing where she talks about how she wanted to distance
herself from her mother because of like their toxic relationship,
and she didn't let her go near her son at all, right,

(01:18:23):
but then she felt bad about it, so she quote
unquote gave her Charlie.

Speaker 3 (01:18:28):
Okay, okay, okay, got it. So that's why they use
Charlie's body for king Payment to inhabit, but it's not
quite working out because Payment is a misogynist and he
hates women or something. I don't know what to make
of this exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:18:48):
Or he's just like very like secure in his gender.

Speaker 1 (01:18:51):
And wants present body being put into their wrong body. Yeah,
it's like we gotta decapitate this body. I don't like. Yeah,
I didn't know what to make of it either, but
I yeah, when I was reading back on criticism of
the time, I feel like I didn't quite agree with
the genter, like there's like a clear desire for a

(01:19:16):
male leader. I don't know. I don't know because I
think I like, ultimately what I decided is I don't
know or understand enough about the underlying like.

Speaker 6 (01:19:26):
Satanist demonology, demonology. Yeah, it's like spiritualism, I get. But
towards the end this movie pretty severely takes a left
from that and gets full on into demon shit.

Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
And so this movie I feel like, lures you in
with kind of like more friendly like women are in
charge spiritualism, and then it takes a turn to demonism
at some point in a way that like I felt
out of my depth and it feels like and this
is just like strictly based on observation, it seems like

(01:20:00):
the demon shit is a little more patriarchal. Yeah, I
just felt like a departure from what we were seeing
before because spiritualism is historically driven by women, and demon
shit seems like it is not. So I didn't know
what they were doing.

Speaker 4 (01:20:19):
Demon stuff is for boys, like church church adjacent, which
traditionally I think.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
Right, it gets more patriarchal. Yeah, it was just confusing.
I wonder how much like ari Astor knows about this
shit and how much of it is just like this
is what I need to happen. What do I need?
Like what horror tools could I use to make it happen?
But yeah, I guess not that we're talking about it.
It feels like there is kind of like a fake
out with like leading with like spiritual practice that is

(01:20:52):
both troubled and women of historically been leaders, and then
kind of pivoting at some point to like, actually it's
a more patriarchal demon thing. I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:21:06):
I feel like the spiritualism part was actually a trick
that the cult was playing on Annie, being like you're
a medium and we can contact your child, and this
is like, this is a spiritualism thing, but really they
were like read this incantation that summons the demon and

(01:21:28):
summon's your child. And by your child, I do mean
the demon that was inhabiting your child, right, and like
using the grief, like grief drove a lot of spiritualism stuff,
I think, which I learned from your podcast actually, and
this is like capitalizing on that for like other nefarious

(01:21:49):
demon cult needs and it's all Rosemary's Baby from there.

Speaker 1 (01:21:54):
It is truely. I mean, it's like and Doud's performance
is so clearly pulled from Raspberry's and like I mean
that as a compliment, but it's like you can see
how like interacting those movies are. I yeah, I don't know.
And and again it's like I guess it's everyone's my
life is going to vary for like ari astor landing On,

(01:22:15):
Like it's actually this scary patriarchal thing that ended up
being kind of the internal truth of what's going on.
It does explain how most women in this world seem
to be absolutely fucked or beholden to this system. But
I don't know. Yeah, the supernatural stuff in this movie,

(01:22:37):
it's very possible that I just don't know enough, but
it never quite connects for me. The family stuff really connects. Yeah,
it just seems like a family of people who are
all genuinely doing their best and are undercut by either
mental illness or the work of the devil, and sometimes.

Speaker 3 (01:22:56):
Both, sometimes both. And I think ari astroposits one of
those two things are the same thing, mental illness.

Speaker 1 (01:23:04):
And that devil.

Speaker 3 (01:23:06):
But maybe I'm just overthinking it.

Speaker 4 (01:23:09):
But uh, I don't want to. I don't know. I
don't want to feel like that's the general way that
or like the thesis of the movie. But I think
it is like the what if of the movie, Like
not that like mental illness and the devil are the same,
but like what if they were? And that's like a
weird place to land sometimes, right.

Speaker 3 (01:23:28):
I also think I'm influenced by something that we bring
up on the podcast a lot, which is that early
scene in Midsommar where there's a character who is explicitly
stated to have bipolar and then she murders her whole
family as if her bipolar drove her to murder.

Speaker 1 (01:23:48):
I was just I was just about to bring that
up where that still is always gonna bother me more
because Midsommar is not a supernatural movie. It's a cult movie.
Like these are both cult movies, but Hereditary is also
a supernatural movie. Midsummer is explicitly like in that world,
we do not see magic shit happen. Any of the
visions that happen in that movie are brought up by drugs.

(01:24:12):
So like, I'll always be and I love Midsummar, but
like I will always be bothered by him. That feels
like the worst like explicit conflation of she is this
and therefore this happened where at very least, and I
still don't like how like it doesn't quite connect with
me how the the two are connected. But at least

(01:24:35):
it feels like there's the possibility of a what if.
But in Midsummer there's it's just like text like bipolar
people kill their families.

Speaker 4 (01:24:44):
You're just like in general, I like I like Hereditary
better than mits Sommer because of I think the supernatural.
Oh and I think it was just scarier period.

Speaker 1 (01:24:55):
It is scarier. But they both love rotting aheads and
lighting people fire. He is like it's his strange addiction
is doing that. But yeah, I don't know, I at
least I don't know. While I find the supernatural stuff frustrating,
sometimes it does temper some of the stuff that. Yeah,

(01:25:17):
I don't think ari Astor like, I don't think enough
bad things have happened to him.

Speaker 4 (01:25:23):
I mean, we don't have to talk about his short films.

Speaker 3 (01:25:28):
I couldn't. I haven't seen them.

Speaker 4 (01:25:30):
Yeah I've seen, I just know about them. I shan't
be seeing.

Speaker 1 (01:25:34):
I saw, I saw the Big One, and yeah, No,
I just think that ari Astor is like I should
in general, keep specific mental illnesses out of his mouth
and his writing until we understand why he's doing it,
because sometimes there does feel like a shock jockey, you know,

(01:25:58):
which feels weird to say of an like an indeed
horror director. But it does sometimes feel like, what's the
most fucked up thing I could present in a way
that you could still present something really really really fucked
up and not be like bipolar made her do it,
you know, or I don't know. In Hereditary it feels

(01:26:18):
like there's a little bit more purpose, or at least
an argument for purpose behind it. But it's this first movie.
There's stuff that doesn't quite work.

Speaker 4 (01:26:29):
No, I think it succeeds for me on like a
horror level. The other stuff I think is good, better
than a lot of horror movies and like more thoughtful
and like the character the acting is really good. I
think really helps in the character work is interesting. But
why I love this movie is like really more because

(01:26:52):
the scares and the tension and it is just such
an effective horror movie.

Speaker 3 (01:26:58):
Yeah, truly, Yes, it's so.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
I mean it's like impossible not to get completely sucked in,
Like it's there's no movie I've seen that. I've seen
movies that explore the same themes, but it's like uniquely
like punishing and engrossing. And the performance, like there's not
a bad performance in it. Everyone is like going at

(01:27:21):
a ten the entire time. It's it's awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:27:24):
And the soundtrack, oh does work. I love to this
is some of my favorite writing music is the soundtrack
for this.

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
It's so and I mean Poloma just like speaking to like,
I love your books so much, and it feels like
you are able to work in the supernatural into family
dynamics and into friendship dynamics like so uniquely, but I
think you do it better than mister Astor. But also

(01:27:52):
he's great at it. But I just if anyone listening
has not yet read Paloma's work, I think it does
with this movie does better.

Speaker 4 (01:28:01):
Oh thank you, it's really it's really nice of you
to say it's true.

Speaker 3 (01:28:08):
Going back to the conversation about gender, so when ari
Astor was asked in an interview with Variety, is there
ever a Charlie or is she paym on from the
moment she's born? Ari Astor responds, from the moment she's born.
I mean, there's a girl that was displaced, but she
was displaced from the very beginning. So we have this

(01:28:29):
male demon that inhabits the body of someone who was
assigned female at birth. And some writers have discussed a
trans masque read of this movie. I want to pull
from a piece in the publication Them by Sasha Geffen
entitled trans Horror Stories and Society's Fear of the trans
Masculine Body. What the film Hereditary reveals about society's moral

(01:28:53):
panic surrounding trans masculine people. This piece points out that
most trans horror story to date have stoked a fear
in the trans feminine movies like you know, Silence of
the Lambs and Psycho, but Sasha Geffin points out that
in general, in horror movies, a prevalent trope is the

(01:29:14):
idea of quote, one gender swirled up into another creates
a monster. The piece goes on to say, quote. Millie
Shapiro's performance as Charlie abused the character with a deep
pathos and clearly conveys that she feels alienated from her body.
During a phone interview, film critic Caden Mark Gardner tells

(01:29:35):
me he recognized his own childhood gender dysphoria in Charlie's
on screen presence. This is now a quote from Caiden
Mark Gardner. When I was growing up, even though I
didn't realize I was going through gender dysphoria, I was
in these baggy hoodies and genes a lot of the time,
sort of the way Charlie was dressing, he says. Together
with film critic Willow maclay, he publishes Body Talk, a

(01:29:58):
series of conversation about films that speak implicitly or explicitly
to the trans experience. Many of these films are horror movies,
as horror is one of the only genres where the
sanctity of the body is regularly disrupted, where the distress
of something akin to gender dysphoria is expressed legibly on screen.

(01:30:19):
Hereditaries transition allegory involves not only the violent death of
a girl, but also the torture and eventual evacuation of
a CIS male body. Parentheses Peter that Charlie's transition requires
so much physical violence speaks to a lingering anxiety among
sis people, that transition is at best a form of

(01:30:39):
mutilation and at worst a kind of death, a sloughing
of one body in exchange for a new, different one.
The piece goes on, I think the whole thing is
worth a read. We will link it in the description,
But I thought this was just a really interesting interpretation
of that aspect of the movie.

Speaker 4 (01:31:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:31:02):
Yeah, I do feel like it's like another demonstration of
how open to interpretation kind of this story remains. And
I feel like that's been a conversation around a lot
of horror movies that we've covered, and how many of
the horror movies we've covered are made by ariastrotypes of
you know, like white GUYO Tours. And it doesn't make

(01:31:25):
the movie less good or less impactful, but it does
make it that guy again.

Speaker 4 (01:31:32):
Yeah, Yeah, I feel like I feel this. A lot
of horror is like women centric and then also made
by men. Yes, and it is so like steeped in
this like fear of womanhood and like things that like
in this movie, like women are in this, like they're
part of the secret, and like men are kind of

(01:31:54):
inert and like I feel like that is present in
this movie and in a lot of movie that puberty, pregnancy.
It's like all of these things that happen to women
and that women experience are horrific and like unfathomable to
the men who are creating these pieces.

Speaker 3 (01:32:12):
It's the topic of so many horror movies the class.

Speaker 4 (01:32:17):
And in this one, it's motherhood in a way.

Speaker 1 (01:32:20):
Yeah, we didn't quite get into this, but yeah, the
idea of like, I don't know, the idea that like
this is a mother who is an artist and yet
her like her art is conflated so much with her
family life, and like her dysregulation in some way is
connected to her art. I don't know. I just say
there's so many different entry points to this movie, to

(01:32:43):
the point where I truly don't know what ari Astor
is trying to say. I just know that the viewing
of this movie feels very individual where I've always come
at it of like my read of the movie has
always been like, women are far more powerful than people
give them credit for. Mothers are far more powerful than

(01:33:03):
people give them credit for. But because of all of
this various nagging, like that kind of all goes unseen
and that all you know compounds to what I think
is kind of like a dissatisfying conclusion. But like what
you just said, ploment is just as valid to read
of like the fear of like what generations of women

(01:33:26):
are doing, and an anxiety around women and being kind
of subjugated and defeated by them in like Steve's case.
And I don't know, there's just like so many inns
to just seeing this movie, and I like that there's
not a definitive one, and that's probably why people still
love it so much.

Speaker 4 (01:33:47):
Yeah, And that's part of why I also really like
this movie is the is that there are so many
interpretations and so many things being represented and played with
throughout the movie. And it is not like this like
one to one metaphor for anything in particular, and that's
like what is so what makes it such good horror

(01:34:10):
is that you can find something to fear because there
are so many things, as you said, entry points, and
that's why I think it hits for so many people.

Speaker 3 (01:34:20):
Yeah, I think there is also something to be said
for the fact that we know Annie's character far better
than we know her husband.

Speaker 1 (01:34:30):
We know next to nothing about him other than he's struggling.

Speaker 3 (01:34:34):
He's struggling and he's doing his best. But yeah, we
see Annie working very often. We see Steve at work
one time, but we don't know what he does and
it's not relevant to anything. He's sidelined. Steve is for
many chunks of the movie, and that's feminism.

Speaker 1 (01:34:54):
Well, it's like at least attempting to explore or like
has you I don't know, I don't know. I feel
like this movie is weirdly a step forward. But speaking
to what you were saying a little earlier, Plobo, like,
I always get hyper agitated when you know, regardless of
how much I like dislike whatever, good, bad, and different
in the movie when a like Oteurs burst onto the

(01:35:17):
scene is a guy centering a woman's experience and being
like I wrote this, I got it, I figured it out,
and like, often it's horrible, Often it's awesome, But I
just like I get into like a looping thing of like,
but they'll always get another chance. It doesn't matter if
they nail it or not. And like, do people ultimately care?

(01:35:41):
Why is Ari Aster centering women in his piece? I
don't need the answer, but sometimes I just get conspiratorial
and I'm just like it felt like, especially in the
late twenty tens, a lot of men And you can't
say this for Astor because this is his first feature,
but in this time there are a lot of men
who were suddenly centering women in their pieces to be like,

(01:36:05):
buh the no no no no, Like in disregard everything
I said before, I actually have always cared about women's
internal lives, and like I just took me til twenty
nineteen to like do it, and then you watch it
and you're like, well, this fucking sucks, and like, so
I don't know. I think that I also bring an
inherent anger to Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:36:24):
I also feel like it's just like maybe semi unrelated
pang about like how difficult it is to be a
woman doing horror. It's so like male dominated, and yet
the stories are all so frequently about women, and so

(01:36:44):
I feel a bit of resentment about that.

Speaker 3 (01:36:47):
I have several theories as to why that is why
men fixate on like women in horror stories because they're
afraid of them.

Speaker 4 (01:36:59):
Well, they're scared of women.

Speaker 3 (01:37:03):
Let women's bodies do and I'm speaking like cis normatively here,
I realize that. But as far as like pregnancy and periods.

Speaker 1 (01:37:14):
Yeah, like pussy monsters, have we covered on this fucking shell.
They're like the scariest in the world, and it's like
a vagina.

Speaker 3 (01:37:22):
So that's one thing. I also just think that because
men tend to see women as weak and jostile and fragile,
and we need to be protected and we need to
be We're so delicate that the things that happen in
horror movies, you know, the horrific imagery and and the

(01:37:43):
stalking and the chasing and the killers stabbing, it's I think,
perceived to be more horrific when those things happen to
women than if, oh, if these things were happening to men, Oh,
they'd be able to fight off the stabby killer or whatever.
I think I think that part of the horror of
so many horror movies is this is happening to a woman,

(01:38:06):
and doesn't that make it so much scarier?

Speaker 1 (01:38:08):
Right, I agree, but I also like, I don't think
that that's really what are a astro, but it's all
of that to this movie too, like it's impossible not to.

Speaker 4 (01:38:18):
And also, like with Possession, like so much possession movies
are about possessing women or children because of the corruption
of innocence, and like, even if like this isn't the
thing that our astor like went to the desk thinking about.
When you write in genre, you bring everything to the
table because like inherent in doing genre is you have

(01:38:42):
to interact with everything that's been done before because of
tropes and trends and things like that. So you know
it is worth talking about for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:38:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Men be bringing their biases too.

Speaker 1 (01:38:57):
I mean we are too, we just don't get to
do it as.

Speaker 4 (01:39:01):
And women write fantastic horror, so I mean and there
are Again, It's like, even since twenty eighteen, I feel
like there has been some shift in terms of like
who gets to tell mainstream horror stories.

Speaker 1 (01:39:15):
But always room for more movement because I was, yeah,
as I was getting all worked up talking to my
boyfriend about like why first time directors centering women regardless
of genre, even when I like the movies. I'm still
like slightly side eyeing it, which is not fair of me,

(01:39:36):
but is how I feel. But in any case, you know,
the real kind of stress test of like, is this
genre being meaningfully diversified? Isn't like who gets to make
one movie, but who gets to make three? Because I
think in the last you know, five, like half decade,
we've seen a lot of people get to make their
first movie, but we have not seen a lot of

(01:39:58):
people get to make their second movie. And so I
don't know. I feel like the landscape for especially genre
film is shifting, but it's a lot of people making
their first movie. I want to see a more diverse
group of directors make their third and fourth movies and
like have the same sort of freedom to explore that

(01:40:21):
the ari Astors of the world do. We're getting off topic,
but I.

Speaker 4 (01:40:25):
Mean, yeah, I will say ari Astor and also Jordan Peel.
I think they made like two great horror movies and
then we're like, but I'm not a horror director, and
then made like a third movie that's not horror and
I haven't seen bos Afraid, but they might be like
good movies. But I want like people to commit to

(01:40:48):
the genre and keep making scary movies.

Speaker 1 (01:40:51):
I don't know, and that's why I will be seeing
every m Night Shyamalan movie for the rest of my life.
And that's that is my sacred voalve. I mean, I
guess sometimes what he does is more thrillers, but still
they're cousins.

Speaker 3 (01:41:05):
Is close enough.

Speaker 1 (01:41:06):
I'm really excited for the new m Night Chamblin movie.

Speaker 4 (01:41:09):
I'm always excited for the It's like, you know, even
if they're not good, they're great, or even if they're
not great, they're good.

Speaker 1 (01:41:19):
They're always like confident, big swings. They're firmly comfortable in
the genre they're in, and it's just like a riot.
It's a riot. Oh. The first movie I saw after
I got the vaccine for COVID was Old, and I
was hoping you'd say, Old, what an amazing return to

(01:41:40):
the movies, What an amazing They're just high concert? What's
the new one?

Speaker 3 (01:41:44):
The new one is like, oh, I just saw a
trailer for it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:47):
It looks awesome. It's like there's a they're at like
a stadium concert and there's a serial killer, and then
you find out it's the protagonist that's the serial killer.
It's because mister Shimelan loves his twists.

Speaker 3 (01:42:02):
What's his name, Josh?

Speaker 1 (01:42:04):
I can't wait.

Speaker 3 (01:42:05):
Who's the Josh in the movie?

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
I don't know. I know the Josh of which you speak.

Speaker 3 (01:42:11):
Yes, it's Josh Hartne.

Speaker 1 (01:42:12):
Yes. Yeah, I guess the moral of our Hereditary episode
is go see Trap in theaters on August second. I
am genuinely a trap. Thirty thousand fans, three hundred cops,
one serial killer, no escape. Yeah, I'm going. Wow, I'm going.

Speaker 3 (01:42:29):
Does anyone have anything else they'd like to say about
the movie Hereditary?

Speaker 4 (01:42:34):
I could go on about the scary stuff for a
long time, but I'd love to let you sleep tonight.

Speaker 3 (01:42:40):
So I mean, well, we'll be up late anyway watching Minions.

Speaker 4 (01:42:46):
So healing, healing, up late, healing?

Speaker 1 (01:42:48):
Yes, is there? I know that you said there's like
a lot of technical stuff that you were impressed by
and research. Is there anything in particular that's stuck out
on that end because we don't really cover that stuff
as much in the show.

Speaker 4 (01:43:01):
So I definitely was tracking, like I went through the
movie and was tracking like the progression of fear with
a two step of like uncanny and then scary, and
just like I think it was really effective how those
two things were balanced throughout the movie and then heightened

(01:43:22):
to like an eleven in like the third act. Also
the way that he played with the viewer's anxiety around
what was going on on screen and then use the
momentum of that anxiety to subvert, like to give a

(01:43:43):
new twist. Like an example would be when Peter is
going walking through the room, as we talked about, and
then Tony's in the corner, and then you think that
he's going to interact with her, but then it turns
and it's something completely different, and that happened with the
head lobbing off as well. And then also in the attic,

(01:44:07):
when you know that the body is there and you're
expecting the thing for him to encounter to be the body,
and you're bracing yourself for the headless, dead body, but
he turns around it's something completely different and totally terrifying.
And that just like relentless, like feeding into someone's fear
and then using that fear as a jumping off point

(01:44:28):
on something even scarier, I think is really great. It is.

Speaker 1 (01:44:34):
I feel like, yeah, like a lot of what made
this movie work for me, especially for the first time
but also like it is a movie that very much
rewards on reviewing because it is like playing on what
you expect to happen with a jump scarre. It is
playing on like tropes and like, I don't know, it's
like many Bechtel Cast episodes. I end by being like, well,

(01:44:55):
I talked a lot of shit, but this movie fucking rips,
and I will be watching it again.

Speaker 4 (01:45:00):
Yeah, it's definitely a horror fans horror movie, I think,
because it kind of knows your psychology of having seen
a lot of these movies.

Speaker 3 (01:45:10):
For sure.

Speaker 1 (01:45:11):
I hope that ari Astor makes more horror movies. I
was about to say I will watch Bo's Afraid, but
you know, I'm gonna temper that. I actually don't know
because it looked it's so hard to like. It takes
a movie with a very long run time to dissuade
me from watching a movie where Patti Lapone and Nathan
Lane play the parents. But oh yeah, I know, like

(01:45:34):
two Broadway legends playing the parents of the psychological movie.
But it's three hours long, So what are you gonna do?
I don't know if I'm gonna see kinds of kindness?
You know, it's three Hours Long.

Speaker 3 (01:45:46):
Didn't care for it.

Speaker 4 (01:45:47):
I am looking forward to like Long Legs.

Speaker 1 (01:45:52):
I heard it's so scary.

Speaker 4 (01:45:54):
I'm hoping it will be the next Hereditary for me.
That's that's why I've been thinking about it and this
because that movie. I went to see it in theaters
and I was like, yes, I have been utterly frightened.
And I've been I've been chasing that high and longing
for it, and I want to go and see Long
Legs and be utterly frightened. I hope all these people

(01:46:15):
talking about how they like left the theater crying are
not exaggerating.

Speaker 1 (01:46:19):
I have not seen a an Oz Perkins movie yet,
so I am I'm really interested.

Speaker 3 (01:46:26):
Yeah, I think I'll see it.

Speaker 1 (01:46:27):
That's the kind of nepotism I can get behind.

Speaker 3 (01:46:30):
Yeah, I think I'll see it and then probably have
just full body pains all over again.

Speaker 4 (01:46:36):
Yay.

Speaker 1 (01:46:37):
Yeah, I will be saying I'm excited to see Long Legs.
I'm excited to see Trap.

Speaker 4 (01:46:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:46:43):
Those are the two horror horror entries I'm excited to
see coming up. Yeah, and whenever, whenever the next Saw
movie comes up, because that's where Caitlyn and o oh yeah,
baby eleven that's the slasher horror franchise that Caitlin and
I are fully on the same page about.

Speaker 4 (01:47:02):
Oh oh baby, Like some months ago, I watched every
single Saw movie.

Speaker 3 (01:47:06):
I'm working my way through.

Speaker 1 (01:47:07):
What's your favorite.

Speaker 4 (01:47:09):
Let me tell you. When you watch every single Saw
movie within a span of like two weeks, watching like
one sometimes two a night, they really blur together. I think, like,
and some are really just so bad. But I love
the commitment to like the twist that doesn't make sense.
The twists, it's like it's like soap opera levels. It's

(01:47:29):
like a ton noveloped by the end of it, Like it's.

Speaker 3 (01:47:32):
Like you never see them coming.

Speaker 4 (01:47:34):
No, You're like, oh. And then the music every time
the music is like it's like so so extra. I
love it entirely.

Speaker 3 (01:47:45):
It's the best franchise.

Speaker 1 (01:47:47):
It really is in every I mean, you know, say
what you will about his methods, but he does want
to play a game, and I celebrate that.

Speaker 3 (01:47:56):
I mean, feminist icon Jigsaw.

Speaker 1 (01:48:00):
It's true, he loves his wife.

Speaker 3 (01:48:05):
Hereditary does pass the Bechdel.

Speaker 1 (01:48:08):
Test, Yeah, I mean at many.

Speaker 3 (01:48:10):
Points, Oh, Joan and Annie, Oh they're talking about seances. Oh,
they're talking about grief et cetera. Annie talks to Charlie. Yeah,
there's there's numerous passes our nipple scale, though.

Speaker 1 (01:48:28):
I don't know pass past.

Speaker 3 (01:48:32):
Yeah, I don't think it's I don't know how to
sign it. So a scale of zero to five nipples
where we rate the movie, examining it through an intersectional
feminist lens. I have no freaking idea for this movie. Again,
my brain ceases to work for movies this scary, so
I can't really think about them.

Speaker 1 (01:48:49):
I would probably if I'm making a stab at it,
I would probably fall somewhere in the middle here, or
maybe maybe a little on the generous side of the middle.
I don't know. It is really tricky one. You know,
this movie certainly centers women, but also I mean this
specifically the case of Charlie goes out of its way
to demonize girl for a reasons that I'm still like

(01:49:16):
not clear on outside of in the terest of a twist.
Why that decision was made, I don't know. I really
don't know. IM My instinct is somewhere down the middle.
But even that feels a little nebulous.

Speaker 3 (01:49:32):
It almost feels like, I mean, this is something I
probably should have brought up earlier. But all the women
or girls that we see on screen or that we
know about but don't really see because they are dead,
I e. The grandmother are like harbingers of a scary

(01:49:55):
cult and like, you know, evil witchy types, and then
all the men are just like, don't do they're boring?

Speaker 1 (01:50:04):
Well, see that I don't hate is all women are
witches and all men are boring. Like that's a kind
of like prescriptive thing I could get complete.

Speaker 3 (01:50:13):
That's one view of it. But I also think that
there would be people who walk away from this being
like women are evil and men are just innocent bystanders.

Speaker 1 (01:50:22):
Well I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:50:23):
I don't read it that way, but I think there
are people who would.

Speaker 1 (01:50:26):
But even so, it's like, ultimately they are still serving
the patriarchy. That's what I find more frustrating, is like
they have a lot of agency, but still they're like, no,
the devil is a man, the devil is a sis man,
and we feel that that is certain.

Speaker 3 (01:50:43):
I don't know where's Queen payment.

Speaker 1 (01:50:46):
They didn't want her, we had her, they killed her.

Speaker 4 (01:50:49):
I know.

Speaker 1 (01:50:50):
So the answer is I don't fucking know. I don't know. Paulavi,
do you do you have a feeling on this, you.

Speaker 4 (01:50:56):
Know, I would also like probably put it on like
the middle to like higher middle. I don't know, it's
hard to there's definitely a point five in there somewhere.
Is it a three point five or is it a four? WHOA,
I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (01:51:14):
I would go I would go three maybe three pot
because it's like there's clear intent two, Like there is
intellectual curiosity about what women are experiencing in this book,
which maybe is like the bars on the floor for
a lot of that, like that's true, but this movie
is like deeply interested in what Annie is going through.

(01:51:35):
It is clearly like we know that Annie, well, actually
we don't know. I feel like it's almost maybe a
litmus test for like who are you gonna believe here?
But like Annie is ultimately right about perceiving what is happening,
but she is struggling with mental illness. It's not all
like the answer is a little bit in between, but

(01:51:57):
ultimately it's like it's not like a lot of horror
movies I've seen have led to like it was all
in her head and that is the tragedy of it,
But it's not all in Nannie's head, like It's part
of the tragedy is that people don't believe what she's saying,
and the same is true for Charlie, even though her
being a demon yeah kind of muddles that a little bit,

(01:52:19):
which is why that choice never makes sense to me.
But like it's not like the movie is disinterested in
what she's experiencing. I just feel like the results a
little all over the place.

Speaker 4 (01:52:30):
Kind of in the opposite direction of the feeling of
being too afraid to process this. I think I enjoy
the fears that this presents, and it's like tilting my
bias maybe like more in favor that you know. It's
I'm like trying to separate like what I love about
it as a horror movie and like how I would

(01:52:51):
assess it as from like the Bechdel cast perspective, right.

Speaker 1 (01:52:57):
I Mean, it's a tricky one for this show because
I don't think this movie is trying to be overtly
feminist or not. And that's fine, but yeah, when it
comes down to like how are the women of this
world and story treated? I guess for me on my
personal like how much I enjoy it, rating gets higher
in this specific world that we're talking about I would

(01:53:19):
probably have downed it about a three, three and a
half on a good day.

Speaker 3 (01:53:24):
Oh see, I think, and maybe this is just my fright,
but I would give it like a two. I think
because of my perceived conflation of mental illness equals evil,
demonic possession, and because our Astra has kind of a

(01:53:48):
checkered history with that, and in two of his movies
there's some questionable stuff happening regarding mental illness and conflating it.
It's like, you know, violence or demonic possession or whatever
it is. I really struggle with that, So I think
I'll land on a two. But I also acknowledge that.

(01:54:11):
And again, I think this is like a very well
directed movie and the production design is incredible, the cinematography,
the performances. But I will never watch it again because
I'm just too scared.

Speaker 1 (01:54:24):
And this time you mean it, and this time I
mean it.

Speaker 3 (01:54:27):
If someone if someone else says come on to my
podcast to talk about hereditary I'll say no, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:54:33):
If someone says come on to my podcast, I will
say no.

Speaker 3 (01:54:37):
I will normally say yes, but not if it's a
hereditary thing. Anyway. So yeah, two nipples, and I'm giving
them both to Rex the dog, who I think in
my memory survive.

Speaker 1 (01:54:51):
Tell yeah, yeah, I guess I'm gonna go three point
two five, and I I get to give one get
I would give one to Annie. I'm to give one
to Anne Dowd's performance when she's pretending to not know
about the doormat, because I just think it's a really

(01:55:13):
funny moment where she's like, Oh, your mom made these,
that's weird. I really enjoy that moment every time. Give
one to Charlie. She did nothing wrong. She didn't ask
to be born for crying out loud.

Speaker 3 (01:55:26):
She didn't have to have a payment demon put inside her.

Speaker 1 (01:55:30):
I know. And I'll give point my last point two
five to Steve. He did his best.

Speaker 4 (01:55:35):
I think I would be swayed down to like a
three because, if I think about it, everything we've talked about.
I have also had my critiques about how how those
types of things landed in this movie. Do I have
to give these away?

Speaker 3 (01:55:50):
You don't have to.

Speaker 1 (01:55:51):
You don't have to. You can keep them for yourself.

Speaker 4 (01:55:53):
I don't know if I want to keep those in
my house. I think they'll bring some bad juju.

Speaker 3 (01:55:58):
You can put them in the treehouse if you.

Speaker 4 (01:56:00):
Want yeah, we can put the space heaters on for
them to keep them warm as well.

Speaker 3 (01:56:06):
Yes, yeah, well, Paaloma, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 4 (01:56:10):
Thanks so much for having me and talking about this
with me.

Speaker 1 (01:56:14):
Oh my gosh. And before you go, tell us a
little bit about your book and where we can where
we can find it.

Speaker 4 (01:56:19):
So my short story collection is called Mouth. It is
a collection of eleven dark, weird, surreal stories that are
mostly centered on women. So if you liked Hereditary and
you like weird stuff and want to feel uncomfortable while
reading or watching something, maybe check out my book, which

(01:56:42):
is wherever books are sold.

Speaker 3 (01:56:44):
As I say, we'll link to it in the description.

Speaker 1 (01:56:48):
Of this episode wonderful it fuck it rocks and.

Speaker 3 (01:56:50):
Uh where else can people follow you on social media?

Speaker 4 (01:56:54):
Maybe you can find me on Instagram and a very
infrequently to Twitter at Polo mioo.

Speaker 3 (01:57:08):
And you can follow us on Instagram at Bechdel Cast.
You can subscribe to our Matreon at patreon dot com
slash Bechdel Cast, where there lives an episode on Midsummar.
So if you want to check out our thoughts on
ari Asta's other horror movie from this era.

Speaker 1 (01:57:29):
Yeah, don't, don't hold your breath on the bow as
Afraid episode, but uh, you got your aster episodes, you freaks.

Speaker 3 (01:57:37):
Hope you're happy, but yeah, go over to our Matreon.
It's five dollars a month and it gets you access
to the entire back catalog of our over one hundred
bonus episodes and enjoy a fun, goofy little theme that
we conjure up every month.

Speaker 1 (01:57:58):
And you can get merch at tepa slash The Bechdel Cast.
It's later polohoma is. I'm gonna let her go to
bed and uh, don't let payment bite. Bye bye bye.

Speaker 3 (01:58:16):
The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike
Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskresenski. Our logo and merch
is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to
Aristotle Assevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit

(01:58:38):
linktree slash Bechdel Cast

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

The Bechdel Cast News

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Caitlin Durante

Jamie Loftus

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Hereditary with Puloma Ghosh