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Plot summary
Annie Graham makes miniature dioramas and lives in northern Utah with her husband Steve, a psychiatrist, and their children Peter and Charlie. The family attends Ellen's funeral, and Annie is surprised at how many mourners come. Charlie, thirteen, becomes withdrawn and worries about who will care for her. At school she cuts the head off a dead bird with scissors. Annie tells a bereavement group about her difficult relationship with her mother. Steve gets a call that Ellen's grave has been vandalized and keeps it from Annie.
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hereditary (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While filming, Alex Wolff warned Ari Aster not to say the name of William Shakespeare's Scottish play aloud because of a theater superstition; Aster said it anyway, and one of the film's lights burst during the shooting of the following scene.
- Producer Lars Knudsen said Ari Aster had intense disagreements with an unnamed financier, later revealed as producer Kevin Frakes, over final cut privileges, saying Aster did not have the rights to his own script and did not have final cut.
- Ari Aster pitched Hereditary as a family tragedy and avoided calling it a horror film outright, worried it would not be approved for funding if he did; he named Carrie and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover as influences.
- All of the film's interiors, including both versions of the treehouse, were built from scratch on a sound stage, so walls could be removed to shoot scenes at a much greater distance than a practical location would allow, creating the dollhouse aesthetic.
- Milly Shapiro, a 14-year-old Broadway actress, was cast as Charlie in her cinema debut; Aster said that after her audition he was relieved, because he had left Charlie's personality more ambiguous than the other characters and knew the chances of finding the right actress were slim.
- Toni Collette was one of the first actresses Ari Aster sought for Annie Graham; though reluctant to work on a horror film, she was convinced by the script's grounded approach and said Aster understood the family dynamics and what it is to experience loss.
- The demon king Paimon in the film originates from grimoires including The Lesser Key of Solomon, where he is a king of Hell who commands 200 legions of spirits or angels.
- On July 29, 2018, Hereditary became A24's highest-grossing film worldwide at $80 million, beating Lady Bird ($78.5 million), and held the record until June 2022, when Everything Everywhere All at Once surpassed it.
