Throughout the movie, there are these foreign words that appear on walls and are never really
explained.
So, if you want to hear all about the meanings of the symbology and phrases hidden around
the film, stick around to the end of this video.
As with all Things You Missed episodes, there will be spoilers, I just wanted to emphasize
this time because film goes to some really unexpected places, so do yourself the favor
of watching the movie before you watch this video.
So with that being said, wow!
This was a crazy movie!
I did not expect this to become a possession film, but looking back on it, the signs are
all there.
I even noticed a lot of the signs, like the necklace and decapitated figures when I did
the Things You Missed on the trailer way back in January, but they withheld enough information
to keep us in the dark during the movie.
So let's start at the beginning.
The very first thing we see is a title card letting us know about the passing of the grandmother,
Ellen.
And it also introduces us to her daughter, Annie and her granddaughter, Charlie.
The three generations of women are the basis for this movie’s title, Hereditary, or something
determined by genetic factors and therefore able to be passed on from parents to their
offspring or descendants.
What is this trait being passed down?
We don't find that out until later.
The first shot we see is the treehouse, little do we know it's actually a chapel of demonic
worship.
Hear that?
That's the sound of exploding heads from everyone who didn't take my advice to just see the
movie first.
This treehouse is significant because at the beginning of the film, the family is getting
ready to head to the grandmother's funeral service and they can't find Charlie, because
she actually sleeps out in the treehouse.
When the Mom finds her there, she's upset because it's apparently it's really cold and
she's worried that Charlie might catch pneumonia, to which Charlie says, “I don't care.”
Getting pneumonia is pretty serious, unless you're planning on ditching your current vessel
for a new body some time soon.
Based off of that, the demon, King Paimon, is already in possession of the Charlie's
body at the start of the movie; possibly before she's even born.
Her mother tells her she never once cried as a baby and that the Grandmother really
wanted her to be a boy, suggesting that she had been planning to make the child into a
male vessel befitting the demon from before Charlie’s birth.
The doormat embroidered by the Grandma even says ‘Charles’ instead of Charlie.
At the funeral, Annie gives quite a strange eulogy for her mother.
Let's roll it.
“It’s heartening to see so many strange new faces here today.
I know my Mom would be very touched, and probably a little suspicious.
My mother was a very secretive and private woman.
She had private rituals.
Private friends.
”
I think it’s pretty clear what those ‘private rituals’ are now, knowing that she was the
leader, or as they call it in the movie, Queen, of a demonic cult.
As for the private friends she mentioned, they are her followers.
She notes that the faces who show up to the funeral are not familiar, and that is probably
why.
In fact, I think the naked people who appear in the house toward the end of the movie
(A24 loves their creepy naked old people don’t they?)
.. are probably some of the same people who show up at the service, though I would have
no way of confirming this until I have a copy of the movie, so don’t chop my head off
if that doesn’t end up being true.
Also, if anyone can find Joan in the crowd somewhere, then tweet me a picture of it,
yeah?
I believe it was as they are leaving the funeral, when we see Charlie eating a chocolate bar,
and chocolate can associated with the devil.
It’s the devil’s temptation.
That’s why you have devil’s food cake, which is the chocolate one and angel’s food
cake which is the… not chocolate one.
I’m pretty sure chocolate is the only thing we see her eat, first this the chocolate bar,
and second, the chocolate cake at the party.
Side note: I absolutely love how she eats the chocolate exactly like Mello from Death
Note.
I was smiling to myself in the theater when I saw that.
I also dug the red doorknob, I think it was on Peter’s room, or possibly Charlie’s,
and that’s a reference to The Sixth Sense.
It could also be that the red doorknob was used in a similar way, to indicate the presence
of spirits, so I found that to be an interesting parallel, because the two films share a lot
of similarities.
So the family gets home from the funeral and they’re all dealing with grief in their
own ways.
Annie recreates moments from of her Mother’s life using her miniatures.
So what’s the meaning behind the miniatures?
Here’s my interpretation.
It has to do with one of the traits that is passed down in the family, manipulation.
Starting at the top, King Paimon manipulates Ellen into leading the cult that worships
him by offering to make her his Queen.
In turn, Ellen manipulates the entire family.
Annie, Steve, Charlie and Peter, are all her pawns in her plot to resurrect King Paimon.
She’s orchestrating all the pieces that lead to King Paimon getting into his intended
body, Peter’s body.
Annie is subconsciously at King Paimon’s will as well, but her mind is strong enough
to resist him, at least for the time being.
This is why he’s only able to control her subconscious, the reason she finds herself
on the verge of burning up her son while sleepwalking, and the reason she finds herself creating
miniature versions of the tragic events that lead up to the body transfer.
Her manipulation of the miniature figures represents her Mother’s manipulation of
the actual household.
But it doesn’t stop there, because Charlie is also into arts and crafts, making her own
miniature figures and idols, and eventually making the life sized King Paimon idol that
we see that the end of the movie.
She doesn’t seem to have any other interests outside of creating these demented figures.
She’s doing sketches at the funeral, modifying some toy during class and cutting up a dead
bird at recess.
So this manipulation is a trait that runs all the way down the family line, and seems
to be passed to all the females.
I also did a little reading on King Paimon, and apparently he has a flare for the arts,
and people like to call on him to assist their creative projects, which is why Annie and
Charlie display their traits through their craft.
As we get later into the movie Annie’s mind is gets weaker and weaker, Annie works less
on the model for her work, and more on personal pieces representing the family, because she’ll
soon be a pawn of King Paimon like her mother before her.
As Peter’s classmate put it in a discussion about the flaws of Greek mythological figure
Heracles, “The characters are all just pawns in this horrible hopelessness.”
I think that stands for the movie, Hereditary as well.
Ellen obviously doesn’t see it that way though, because she leaves a note for Annie,
essentially apologizing for what’s happened so far and what’s about to happen, but saying
that these sacrifices must be made and everything will be good in the end.
I’m paraphrasing here, but she’s basically outlining her plan to tear apart the family
with tragedy, so that she can become the queen and they can join the cult of Paimon.
This begins before her death.
At the first group meeting that Annie goes to to try to ease her grief, she talks a little
bit about her family history and mentions that her Mom has DID and dementia.
DID, if you don’t know, is short for dissociative identity disorder, commonly referred to as
multiple personality disorder.
I don’t think she really had this disorder though.
It would make a lot of sense if she was starting to lose control to King Paimon making it appear
that she was switching personalities.
If that’s the case it could also help explain her dementia.
Not much background is given on the rest of the family, but we know that Annie’s father
starved himself and her brother commited suicide, which brings me to the second trait that is
passed down in Hereditary, though it’s not so much a trait as it is a commonality, that
they all suffer tragic deaths.
You have to believe that King Paimon is somehow involved in carrying that out.
That all comes to a head with Charlie.
At 13, she should be old enough to check anything she eats in regards to her food allergy, but
something causes her to eat that cake anyway, and just when it looks like Peter might be
able to rush her to the hospital in time, she sticks her head out the window and gets
decapitated by the pole on the side of the road.
But this no accident, it’s all part of Ellen and King Paimon’s plan.
Decapitation seems to somehow be a requirement for the cult, because we see the same thing
happen to the bodies of Ellen and Annie.
If you need any further proof, the symbol of King Paimon can be seen on that same pole
as Peter and Charlie head to party.
Nearly everything that the demon has manipulated has this symbol.
It’s on Annie and Ellen’s necklaces, in Joan’s house after she’s placed the curse
on Annie, and written in blood on the roof of the attic where Ellen’s body is stored.
When we see the King at the end the idol also wears that symbol.
I already mentioned how one of Peter’s classmates has the on point Heracles analysis, well in
another class he’s learning about the Great Depression, you can see it written on the
chalkboard, and how it was started by the Great Crash, which was when the stock market
crashed in 1929.
You could say the same about the family in the movie though, that a great depression
was cast over them after a great crash.
After that depression sets in, the demon, with the help of Ellen’s ‘secret’ friend
Joan, starts to take over the family in order to get the the body he wants.
Joan pretends to befriend Annie at the support group so that she can ease her into the idea
of performing the ritual to summon King Paimon.
She is almost given away by her doormat, which was made by Annie’s mother who embroidered
the doormats for the grandkids, but Annie ends up brushing it off as just a similar
style.
Eventually, Annie does find out that Joan and Ellen were in cahoots, all she had to
do was look in her mother’s left behind photo album, but their relationship was so
bad that Ellen didn’t even have to worry about her daughter finding out.
In fact, it’s mentioned that they were practically estranged until the birth of Charlie, when
Ellen suddenly started to take interest, for obvious reasons: she had plans for Charlie.
Suddenly, all the weird stuff from early on starts to make more sense.
How Charlie was her Grandmother’s favorite child.
How Annie kept Ellen away from Peter but, quote, “Gave Charlie to her.”
How Annie wasn’t even allowed to breastfeed her daughter, “because she needed to feed
you.
Because she needed to feed you.
Because she needed to feed you.”
And how Charlie wondered who would be taking care of her now that Ellen was gone.
But as Annie starts to figure out what’s going on, she begins to lose herself to the
fate destined by her DNA.
All the sudden she can only get to sleep in the treehouse, which, as a reminder, is a
freezing cold demon worship site.
Fights break out at the dinner table.
Annie accuses Peter of looking at her with that face on his face,
All I do is worry,
and all I get back is that face on your face!
possible reference
to the fact that he is not destined to possess his own body.
Also after the death of Charlie, we start to see this light flare occasionally come
up.
I believe this strange light is the physical manifestation of King Paimon when he is not
inside of a body.
We see it stalk Peter in the hall at school, where he ends up temporarily losing himself
to King Paimon and smashing his face against the desk.
Then it comes up after the father, Steve, bursts into flames, suggesting that it’s
traveling from body to body.
Then near the end, when Peter commits suicide by jumping out the window, the light travels,
lands on him, then disappears.
When Peter’s body reawakes, he is taken over by King Paimon.
He goes to his new place of worship, the treehouse, where the movie ends with many voices chanting
the name of the king of Hell.
There are only like 6 or so people in the tree house, and half of them are beheaded,
but it sounds like 20 or more voices chanting, which created a creepy effect that actually
sounded like the audience members in front of me were chanting too.
So that covers everything that I noticed in the movie except for the strange words written
on the wall throughout the movie.
We know they are not English, and likely they are the same language that Joan made Annie
recite the ritual spell in.
Here are the four words that I noticed.
I couldn’t find much info on Satony other than the fact that it’s one of the words
used to summon a demon and sounds kind of similar to Satan.
Zazas is similar to Zaza or Zozo, which is part of a supposed phenomenon among Ouija
board users where, upon asking who they are speaking to, board would spell out Z-A-Z-A
or Z-O-Z-O.
I was only able to find a couple sources online talking about Liftoach, but I guess it’s
a rough English spelling of a Hebrew word, לפתוח , which means open, and it was
used in this one blackmetal song called Dissection by Reinkaos where the full line translated
to “blind dragon, open your eyes.”
Could have something to do with those pictures of Peter with his eyes crossed out.
Then the last one is Pandemonium, an english word meaning wild and noisy disorder, and
it also contains the word “demon” inside of it.
Alright, there was a lot to take in with this movie, so drop me a comment and let me know
what you noticed, and if you enjoyed the movie, let me know by giving this video a like.
This has been a crazy week if you’re a horror fan.
New movies, new trailers -- just yesterday I put out 28 Things You Missed In The Halloween
Trailer, so be sure to check that out if you haven’t seen it yet.
I’m gonna be keeping you up to date on all the Things You Missed, so remember to subscribe
to CZsWorld for new horrors every week, ring that deathbell for notifications and I’ll
see you in the next one.
Assuming, we both survive.