Abject Motherhood in Hereditary

One of the most effective images in this film is one of the miniature shots that Annie is working on: an image of her recently deceased mother breast feeding a too-old-to-be-breastfed Charlie while mini-Annie watches helplessly from the side. We’ve already heard through dialogue that this was a real dynamic in their family, and I think the actual image-in-miniature of this dynamic is the strongest suggestion in the film of the monstrous womb and archaic mother that Barbara Creed theorizes in Monstrous Femininity. 

The ambiguity of castration in this film is also fascinating. Did Annie’s son, Peter, even come from Annie and her husband, Steve, performing procreation? Maybe the satanic cult has the power to induce pregnancy without the act of sex “the natural way.” The generative power of reproduction, of being female, that Creed talks about is complicated in this film by the presence of the cult and Annie’s abject motherhood. She confesses to Peter that she “never wanted to have” him, and had been trying to induce a miscarriage but aludes to her mother’s power being too strong to let it happen. Is Peter even Annie’s child? Is the archaic mother the mother of all three? This film is actually incredibly complicated when looked at through the lens of Creed’s theories.

The Graham family descends into utter chaos when Annie’s mom “dies” (is she even dead though) which is shown first and foremost with the death of Charlie. Charlie is on the verge of puberty when this happens, and maybe the threat of her own reproductive independence is too much so the cult manipulates Annie into forcing her to go to the party that leads to her decapitation. Charlie plays the role of the knowing child very well, but unfortunately for her, she knows too much.

There is a lot to cover with this film, like King Paimon and what the eventual assertion of a masculine master says about the monstrous femininity of the rest of the film, or what the male writer/director of the film misses because of his, in my opinion, very masculine approach in constructing this film. But that can be saved for another blog post. Thanks for reading.