Hereditary is one of the A24 horror movies that helped put the independent entertainment company on the map. Before Midsommar (2019), Pearl (2022), and Talk To Me (2022), there was Hereditary. On Wednesday, April 24, A24 re-released Hereditary in IMAX so fans could re-experience the horror masterpiece that became an instant classic. Even now, six years after Hereditary's release, the film not only holds up, it's still one of the best horror movies of the modern era.

While Hereditary may not be 100% responsible for the surge of "elevated horror", it is a perfect example of the horror trend. Most horror fans know of this movie's legacy, even if they've never seen it, and for good reason. With a phenomenal cast, stellar acting, and cinematography so uncomfortable it'll make the viewer's skin crawl, this iconic horror film has everything a fan could want.

10 Hereditary Masters The Slow Burn Approach

• Hereditary was released on June 8, 2018
• Ari Aster directed the film

Slow burn refers to a storytelling trope that starts slowly and deliberately takes time to get to the point. In the horror world, this can be a death sentence. Horror fans go to the movies to be scared and, well, horrified. Horror fans are looking for a good story, but they're also looking for an adrenaline rush. Taking too long to get the ball rolling can edge a movie into the boring or unwatchable category.

Hereditary, however, understands the delicate balance of taking things slow, but keeping the audience's attention. It makes the audience just uncomfortable enough to let it get away with the slow escalation. In the beginning, the audience has to process an uncomfortable funeral, Charlie's strange mannerisms, a flash of a ghostly figure, and unease between a mother and her children. This slowly builds up to the first truly terrible scene: Charlie's death.

9 A Masterclass In Misdirection

• Hereditary stars Toni Collette as the main character, Annie Graham
• Gabriel Byrne plays Annie's husband, Steve Graham

The original Hereditary trailer suggests the film will focus on Charlie, an unsettling 13-year-old girl who draws uncomfortable portraits of other people and clicks her tongue randomly. Her tongue clicks can be heard throughout the trailer, and it even highlights her cutting off a dead bird's head with a pair of scissors. Charlie even got her own trailer before Hereditary's release. Most horror fans deduced that Charlie's appearance was a dead giveaway for the creepy kids in the horror genre trope.

In a way, she still fits this trope. Any horror buff knows that a creepy kid usually means a bad time for everyone around that kid. That's still the case in Hereditary, but not in the way people expected. The audience was speechless when Charlie died fairly early in the film. She was a catalyst for grief and paranoia, but she was absent throughout most of the film. Charlie's portrayal in the trailer vs her brief appearance in the movie is just one of many examples of how well Hereditary subverted expectations.

8 Cinematography That Maximizes The Audience's Discomfort

• Hereditary is rated R and has a run time of 2 hours and 7 minutes
• It is classified as a horror/mystery

One thing that Hereditary does extremely well is create uncomfortable scenes that make a viewer's blood run cold. The movie mostly takes place in the Graham's house. Their house is in an isolated location where other houses can't be seen. In addition to the isolation, the house itself is large and grand, but filled with plenty of old and eerie details. The house almost doesn't look like it belongs to the modern era.

The camera loves to play with light and darkness, forcing the viewer's attention to the empty space in each frame where nothing is happening. Most of the time, there's nothing there, but sometimes, if the audience looks hard enough, they might find something terrifying. The shot of each scene feels deliberate and unsettling like there's always something in the background to notice, but there's nothing there most of the time. When there is something to see, it's up to the audience to find it, because the film's characters likely won't.

7 The Film Never Relies On Blood, Guts, Or Gore

• Annie and Steve have two children, Peter and his little sister, Charlie
• Alex Wolff plays Peter and Milly Shapiro plays Charlie

Many modern horror films fall into the same trap of relying on ridiculous kill scenes and over-the-top gore. Some franchises, like Saw, have made their name that way. Hereditary doesn't do that. While it does contain a few truly disturbing death scenes, there isn't a lot of blood and guts involved. Instead, the film aims for a much more unsettling vibe. Before Charlie's death, it focuses on Charlie slowly choking to death from an allergic reaction. After her death, her decapitated head can be seen on the side of the road.

It's not just the moments leading up to a death and the aftermath of the kill that are uncomfortable, though. The film plays with plenty of genuinely disturbing images that audiences aren't likely to forget. Annie's wailing after finding Charlie's decapitated body, for example. Other unsettling scenes include the ants crawling all over Peter and bubbling out of his mouth, Annie painting a model of her own daughter's death, and Peter's sobbing during the seance.

6 Hereditary Ties Up Every Loose End

• The director, Ari Aster, also wrote Hereditary's screenplay
• The movie had a budget of 10 million USD
• It made 82.8 million USD at the box office, but since its initial release, its popularity has grown

There's an old saying that if a film shows a gun, at some point in the story, that gun needs to be used. This can apply to a wide variety of things in storytelling. A writer shouldn't bother wasting precious space on fruitless information that doesn't add anything to the film. For example, Hereditary has a scene where Charlie's eating a candy bar at her grandmother's funeral. Both her parents check to make sure the chocolate doesn't have any nuts in it because Charlie is allergic. Charlie later consumes nuts, which results in an accident that kills her.

Hereditary follows this formula for every single thing that shows up in the film. When Annie mentions that Joan's doormat is just like the ones her mother used to make, it's for a reason. When the cemetery calls to inform the Grahams that Annie's mother's grave was desecrated, it's for a reason. Every written message and repeated image comes full circle. Not a single plot thread is left unanswered. By the end of the movie, everything makes sense.

5 The Movie Depicts The Harsh Realities Of Trauma, Grief, & Other Difficult Emotions

• Hereditary is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes
• It has a 90% Tomatometer and a 70% Audience Score

Hereditary starts with the death of Annie's mother. The audience never meets Annie's mother, but through Annie, they learn that she is a secretive, paranoid woman who struggles with many mental health disorders. Annie didn't let her around Peter when he was born. They were estranged for many years. Her death didn't upset Annie. Starting the film with a funeral sets the tone for the rest of the movie, though. Nothing good can come after such a bleak and morbid beginning.

Hereditary covers many mature topics, including dealing with the loss of one's parents and the unexpected loss of one's child. Annie, Peter, and Steve all deal with the aftermath of a gruesome accident that creates horrible turmoil within their family. Peter is afraid of his mother and Annie has grown resentful of Peter. Annie didn't want to have Peter and some part of her subconscious has been trying to get rid of her kids for years. What's worse is that the audience can't escape the growing feelings of grief, hatred, resentment, and trauma. As the characters experience these emotions, the audience has to bear the burden with them.

4 It's Hard To Tell What's Real & What Isn't

• According to Metacritic, Hereditary has reached Universal Acclaim with 87% positive reviews
• 75% of Google users claim to like the movie

One of the coolest and most unsettling things about Hereditary is how the film blends reality, dreams, and hallucinations. There are several scenes that perfectly transition from a dream or some sort of lucid state to reality or vice versa. These scenes are hard to identify until the person sleeping or seeing things is forced to snap back to reality. Because the audience also experiences the dreams as reality, it's hard for viewers to tell what's real.

One example happens when Annie finds ants crawling on her pillow. Curious, she looks around to find a massive pile of ants crowding around her window. The ants lead her to Peter's bedroom, where she finds her son completely encased in the insects, much like Charlie's head was on the side of the road. She doesn't snap out of it until Peter wakes her up from sleepwalking. Peter experienced something similar when two hands grabbed his head and tried to pull it off. He wakes up to see his mother in his room and immediately thinks that she did it. Hereditary is full of moments like these, and it's expertly done.

3 Peter & Annie's Relationship Is Turbulent & Hostile

• Before the United States release, Hereditary premiered at Sundance on January 21, 2018
• Pawel Pogorzelski provided the cinematography

Annie demands that Peter take his little sister, Charlie, to a high school party. At the party, Charlie accidentally eats nuts and has a violent allergic reaction. While Peter races his sister to the hospital, Charlie sticks her head out the window. Peter swerves to avoid an animal in the road and Charlie's head collides with a post, knocking it clean off her shoulders. This leads the audience to believe that the accident is why Annie resents Peter so much, but as the movie goes on, the truth comes out.

Annie almost killed Peter and Charlie while sleepwalking. Peter never forgave her, despite her swearing she had no idea what she was doing. Their relationship took a nosedive after that incident, but Annie was harboring a secret since Peter's birth: she never wanted him. The dynamic between them is uncomfortable to watch and since the audience learns as Peter does, they can't help but empathize more with Peter than Annie. When Annie is screaming at Peter at the dinner table, it feels like Annie is screaming at the viewer.

2 A Few Scary Scenes Steal The Show

• The main antagonist of the film is Paimon, one of the Eight Kings of Hell
• The pendant that Annie's mother wore is a similar sigil to Paimon's real sigil

When Hereditary wants to roll out the scares, it comes out swinging. Most of the movie relies on a tense and uneasy atmosphere, so when it throws a scare at the audience, it's authentically terrifying. One of the most infamous scenes in the film is, of course, Charlie's death. A young girl dying in such a horrific and brutal way is hard to swallow, but it's not the only terrifying scene in the movie. One of the subtlest scares in Hereditary happens towards the end.

Peter wakes up in his room after breaking his nose at school. He calls out for his parents, but no one answers. He sits up in the dark and the camera hovers on him. It takes a while for an unsuspecting eye to catch Annie clinging to the wall in the corner of the room above his bed. It's so dark that people can hardly see her. Peter never noticed her. The only scene more unsettling than this is when Annie sees her own head off with piano wire in front of Peter.

1 Paimon Wins In The End

• Ellen, Annie's mother, was the leader of a cult that worshiped Paimon
• Ellen and her followers became obsessed with providing Paimon with a male body to inhabit

Annie has little knowledge of her mother's true identity or her involvement with the demon Paimon. When Ellen passes away, Annie is left with no answers aside from a few boxes left behind by her mother. These possessions provide context clues about Paimon and Ellen's true intentions. Annie slowly pieces things together as best she can, but the audience can probably figure things out quicker than Annie can.

Ellen and her followers wanted to provide Paimon with a male body, a form that could become Paimon's true vessel. The vessel needed to be Ellen's blood relative, but her son killed himself, leaving only Annie. When Annie finally had children, she produced a suitable vessel. Annie realizes too late that she needs to do something to save her son. Unfortunately, she's unable to stop Paimon. In the end, every member of Peter's family is dead and Paimon claims Peter's body for himself. Movies rarely have the guts to end with such a horrible outcome. Even horror movies usually try to have some positive spin at the end, but Hereditary didn't back down.