Modelling the Model Mother (Hereditary)

(Originally written on the 31st of October, 2022)

SPOILERS FOR HEREDITARY

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The best horror films are never actually about the horrifying beings that torment their characters. In truth, the films that we hold in such high regard seek to explore the deep, complex, and often uncomfortable subject matter that hold, in the hearts of audiences, greater weight when compared to any supernatural threats. Although Ari Aster’s 2018 horror debut Hereditary certainly delivers in the supernatural sense with the family’s late grandmother secretly being the leader of a demon-worshipping cult, it is ultimately about the emotional damage that she inflicted upon her daughter and how that abuse was allowed to fester and ultimately consume her entire family.

One of the film’s more notable elements that build upon this theme is its cinematography. The camera work present in film’s opening scene not only conveys this, but establishes a greater meaning for the intentional cinematography that will be present as the film goes on. The opening shot of the film shows the family’s treehouse through the window of Annie’s study before turning to face the miniature of the family’s house (the very house that the treehouse is looking into). Being a place frequented by Charlie (the first vessel of the demon Paimon) as well as the final meeting place for the cultists, the tree house becomes a symbol of the Ellen’s influence and hold over Annie and her family. The camera work immediately establishes this dynamic as well and how Annie, despite her best efforts, never truly healed from the emotional abuse she suffered from her overbearing mother. Her profession as a miniaturist being a method in which she can gain a sense of autonomy as a matriarch without being the dominating and constrictive woman that her mother was.

This is further seen after the seamless transition of the camera looking in the miniatures of Peter’s bedroom to Peter’s actual bedroom where he awakened by Steve. The camera is identical to how it was with the miniature, indicating that we are viewing the family from Annie’s metaphorical perspective as a matriarch. This perspective is reinforced in the next shot where Steve makes his way to Charlie. The camera is viewing him in the mid-ground from the same side-perspective as before, only to pan down to introduce Annie awaiting them in the foreground, leading them. On the day of her mother’s funeral, she wishes to exert the independence gained from her authority. This dynamic present in the camera work is made more obvious later in the film when Annie notices that her mother’s room was entered. The camera is positioned in said room as we wait for Annie to enter the frame. The watchful eye exists even without her knowing. `When Annie does notice and look in the direction of her mother’s room, it is her leaning against the 4th wall, subconsciously recognized that she is being watched in the meta sense by the audience, the literal sense by the cult, and the symbolic sense by her overbearing mother.

Despite her best efforts, Annie still faces external threats to independence. The scene that immediately follows the opening is the funeral scene that opens to a shot of the crowd in the pews (Ellen’s cult) before turning to face Annie. Given how she was already shown in the previous scene, this slow reveal does not serve as an introduction to the protagonist, but instead a representation of the dynamic between her and her mother (even after Ellen’s passing). She, as an individual, comes second to her mother. Directly opposing this is the scene in which she first enters the support group. The cinematography is inverted; rather than moving from the crowd to her, the camera pans so as to always keep Annie in the centre of the frame as she makes her way to the group. By attempting to seek help to overcome the trauma from her relationship with her mother, she finally makes her own wellbeing the priority.

When the time comes for Annie to open up to the group, the camera work conveys to the audience her internal conflict as she grapples with her mother’s lingering influence over her. While she remains in the centre of the frame, the camera is zoomed out when she first begins speaking, slowly zooming in the more she opens up about her strife. After a PoV shot that shows how awkward and out of her element she feels, the camera returns to her, only not as close as it was prior to the PoV shot. Although falling under editing rather than cinematography, it is worth noting that when Annie begins to show weakness and resentment for her mother, the film cuts to a side angle of her from behind two of the people on her right, giving the impression that she is being watched. As established earlier, the angle is an indication of her mother’s watchful gaze taking hold. Once the topic is shifted to her frustrations with her family and how she was blamed, the camera begins to zoom out from the close up as she loses her individuality and is once more forced to play the role of the mother that she so desperately did not want to be.

The miniatures, being a representation of Annie’s struggle to maintain control, are present in the scene in which Peter seeks permission to borrow the car without disclosing the truth that the party he is going to is not one that she would be fond of. The editing is a simple shot-reverse-shot, but the camera angles change as the conversation progresses. When Peter first enters, he is shown with the miniatures still in frame. But when he begins to lie to her, the miniatures are no longer present, instead only showing him from a closer angle as an individual with a desire separate from what his mother wants. And yet, when he is trapped by Annie into inviting Charlie, the camera returns to where it was originally: showing Peter with the miniatures in frame as Annie has regained control.

Their strained relationship reaches the point of no return when Peter drives past the telephone pole with the cult symbol carved into it. Although the camera was previously turning to track the car, it came to an abrupt halt once Peter had crossed the pole, leaving the pole in the centre of the frame at a distance close enough for it to extend across the entire height of the frame. Later, when Annie creates a miniature of Charlie’s decapitated head, the camera is placed at an angle that allows for the miniature telephone pole to separate Annie from Steve who is trying desperately to console her despite him beginning to lose her.

The cinematography framing the characters as miniatures only becomes more apparent once Annie begins to uncover the truth in the scene where she recognises the pattern of Joanne’s mat (once she leaves the frame, the camera lingers on the security camera as she and the audience are very much aware of her being watched). As she runs through the hall to her Ellen’s room, the tracking shot now shows the insides of the walls as it follows her from the side perspective. The house is becoming more akin to a genuine miniature with an open 4th wall. The first time this was shown was during Charlie’s funeral where the camera tracked her casket into the dirt as she was still a vessel for Paimon. In the final scene of the film when Charlie, in Peter’s body, stands in front of the cult, the camera shows the inside of the treehouse as a miniature floating in the void as the miniaturist is a being greater than mere humans.

Ultimately, Annie failed to overcome the abuse she suffered from her mother. Her attempts to stand as an individual ended with her either being made small or shown from a perspective that implied that she was merely a miniature sculpted by Ellen’s influence. This unresolved struggle ultimately hurt her family as the more entranced she became by the occult (falling deeper into Ellen’s influence), the more the family themselves became miniatures.