(Jan. 11, 2024 ● Oslin Pierrette)
Woahh, this was scary before. But just because it was scary, a great scary movie. But now I understand what this was. And now it’s deeply existentially scary.
It’s a story of the Dark Prophecy and repressed guilt. You start out with the mother of Annie’s funeral. And you see Annie just feel so out of place, and her family as well. Just an odd presence with some odd people. And Annie addresses this estrangement. Even in Annie’s current family. There seems to be this lack of bond, connection and intimacy. Not really a family, but everyone individually living their own separate lives within the same house. Also signs that Annie was a daughter to maybe a psychopathic or narcissistic mother. Just an unlucky pick of the draw of hereditary you could say.
Then boom, decapitation. Charlie’s head gets taken off gruesomely by a pole. When taken to the party by Peter, and she accidentally ate nuts that she was allergic to, and had to be rushed to the hospital. One of the most horrifically iconic scenes of all time. Like wow. But you’re met with the absolute look of disbelief on Peter. You just killed your sister. I mean she died I guess you can say accidentally, but with a lot of the fault and blood on your hands with your negligence, and being blinded by temptation. Maybe if he had less fault, maybe her death could be processed. But since he could easily acknowledge who was at fault, internalizing and processing the current moment was impossible. The guilt was not allowed to surface, but intensely repressed. It’s like nothing has happened. Because there’s this absolute disbelief to the point you want to believe it’s all ok and move on as if nothing has happened. This extreme coping mechanism to deny reality and not process the severity and magnitude of the truth of what you caused and has happened. And we don’t truly know the truth of Charlie’s death until Annie screams of absolute heartbroken shock.
The family is all out of wack now. Now there’s this lingering absolute disconnect. Nobody is processing nor accepting anything. But life goes on and trying to grasp onto this insane normality. Stuck behind all this unaddressed & repressed guilt. That until addressed, no one can truly move forward. You just see the guilt weighing differently, but intensely heavily on everyone. The truth of the guilt lingers with them with every moment that they deny. You see it with Peter, this constant guilty agony. Then you see Annie with constant grief, not being able to process all these events. She lives with so much guilt, grief, and confusion. Then her husband, he’s just normal. He seems unmoved by it all. Like he’s free from feeling any of it. But really he’s numb to it all, and then you see his extreme medication escapisms. He refuses to feel anything, stuck in this mundane nothingness. So this family is just stuck.
Then the iconic dinner table. These absolutely estranged individuals, that’s not really a family anymore, sharing a table. Trying to enjoy a meal together, trying to achieve some sense of normalcy. But in Peter wanting that, he can’t get that satisfaction, because of his mom Annie. She is just obviously not going along with this delusional fraudulent insanity. Peter feels his mother’s resentment, and he needs her to address it, begging her to, because seemingly he’s begging to be released of his own guilt that he feels.
Then Toni Collette gives one of the most iconic monologues ever, addressing that nobody accepts nor addresses anything. Just forcibly living this lie. Showing no care or remorse for the horrific events that have taken place. So Annie can’t accept and get on the path to closure of coming to peace with the truth, because of how repressed the guilt is. So it breeds a deep vitriolic resentment that now is what this family is. Spiteful disharmonious attachment.
But honestly, horrific events have taken place. You don’t have the convenience of just wishing the pain just goes away. You have to take the path of valor and acknowledge the painful truth. Unless you’ll be stuck and stunted by this deep trauma, that you’ll never develop beyond because of your denial to process the guilt or resentments, and only deteriorate further. That needs to be accepted. There is a way out, and it’s not peaceful, it’s not painless, it’s not easy. But it’s the honest way out, and there may be beauty at the end of the breakthrough. Then after you can forge a path of light beyond the dark truth that was accepted. And if you get to the point of acknowledging the truth. You can get to the beautiful point of grace and forgiveness. Not saying that you’ll forever be free from the pain afterwards, but it’s definitely a better place than having that repressed guilt, resentments, and that agony. You can get to a place where you can beautifully come together and start making some beautiful human growth and developments, that’s what’s possible. Finding some truly beautiful understandings of what really this life is. Beautiful answers.
But honestly this is an estranged family, a family with a lack of intimacy. They don’t have the toolset to truly have these emotions and issues, and then to put those truths on the table. And even with themselves they aren’t good with acknowledging truth, being vulnerable with self. Whenever there is some form of division, it stays there, no elastically redemptive aspect to bring them closer. So when any conflict and issue arises, it just constantly gets brushed to the side. So there’s never any one thing that happens that causes a deep distancing and repelling division. Just over time with all these unaddressed conflicts and issues, at some point you just realize there’s this tension of separation that you quite can’t understand, but it’s just there, and you just don’t know how to address it, and you just see how present that is. Which blocks the possibility of healing, progression out of trauma, and then beautiful development can follow.
But instead of the natural processing of guilt, because guilt is a good thing. Listening and processing it, can bring you back to good, it lets you know you’re still human with an inner humanity.
But instead, Annie found Joan. Joan has come to this new awakening, a seance. She can’t deal with the guilt, so she has found a way to contact the supernatural and connect with her grandkid who died. A convenient way to contact her grandkid to let her know it’s all ok, which can make her rest with her guilt. It scares Annie, because the supernatural would scare anybody. But Joan just gives it to her, if she really needs it. Annie just has to repeat the words instructed.
Annie sees ants, goes to the trail, and it’s covering Peter’s face, the way it was probably covering Charlie’s beheaded face. Then she is awakened from this sleepwalk. And she talks about the deep guilts and regrets she’s had. About not wanting to be a mother, about almost burning or killing him. She’s expressing all her guilt, what’s needed. Then they’re seemingly on fire. Then she’s awakened from her actual dream. Obviously in her dream she had all this repressed guilt and trauma, that maybe she should release. Instead she runs to some room or closet, reciting what Joan told her to for the seance, in hope she conveniently sees if Charlie is ok, so they can be freed from this guilt. She grabs her family to go downstairs to hold this ritualistic seance. Peter is on board with it, he is in constant guilty agony, so it is better than nothing for him. But it comes to a quick rude awakening of tremendous fear, and exponentially lively guilt. They had the chance to naturally bypass this guilt. But they denied the guilt and reality so much, they decided to go with what was seemingly convenient, which is insane because they chose seance.
And they opened the door to very demonic and vengeful entities. Those words were the names of demons. And they entered it into that household and family. Completing this pact. They fulfilled the Dark Prophecy. This story was destined and fate. It’s not like they were controlled, because demons and devils seemingly within many stories, including this one, don’t have that power. All they can do is set the table, and the family fell for every trap and temptation, and ignored all the signs to avoid the prophecy. If they would’ve just naturally worked through their guilt. Because you’re probably not supposed to bother and wake the dead, the moved-on. You’re supposed to let go, and allow the spirit to flourish in its own state, instead of disrespecting it, and making it deal with worldly issues, when they’re supposedly in a spiritual state. And instead they were fooled by cult satanists to summon demons into their family. If they would’ve naturally worked through the guilt. The table setters, the occultist would’ve lost all their power and chances to achieve this demonic ritual through this family.
Back to the Dark Prophecy and fate, you see that there was a lot of orchestrated efforts to fulfill this prophecy. The stage was set by occultists. Now all the family had to do is to continue down the path currently how they are living their lives, with unaddressed repressed guilt, and lack of agency in their lives. And then the play of The Dark Prophecy will seamlessly come together. Had they listened and become wise to the signs that they were heading into their own destruction with their docile lack of agency ways, maybe they could’ve saw the demise ahead of them and changed coursed, into a path of courage and valor of dealing with the conflicts in their lives.
But now the fate and pact is sealed. And now the demonic dark prophecy will be played out. Peter goes through unfathomably inescapable demonic hellscape experience, exponentially more than just being haunted. Annie has got to the point now that she understands all that is happening. She put the clues together. That her family and Joan are a part of this demonic cult, and she’s signed the pact that now her family is a part of that. But it’s that thing where it’s too late. The signs were always there, and you found out only when the demons yelled they were here for you. That’s when you come to this great understanding and conviction that you have to truly reverse this, but the pact is signed. She tries to reverse it, but it only takes her husband, engulfed in fire, and takes over her as the host.
This is where the movie just becomes absolutely horrifying. You see all these weird creepy people. That seems like the ones in the funeral and the memory books. They’re all occultist participating in this ritual. Peter jumps out the window, and you see the demon takes over the body as a host. Then in the treehouse. You see this ritual go on, that is deeply existentially horrifying.
The Dark Demonic Prophecy has been fully fulfilled. The chosen host has been taken over by one of the King Demons of hell or something, don’t even want to use its name. To the people that worship this entity, it brings them worldly riches, hidden knowledge, sciences, and to grow this mechanism of demonic evil, spread it on to man. Grow this demonic parasitical structure as powerful as it can be. And the people who claim it as its leader, are selling their souls in exchange for all these worldly powers and pleasures. That was the sacrifice that Elaine was talking about. She sacrificed her family’s soul and well being. Basically like a Hereditary damnation to demonic hell.