Specificity is key when making anything work in storytelling. Characters with little oddities or quirks add to the tapestry of the realness of any fictional world. When it comes to horror, this becomes integral to the scariness of the movie. If you have creepy characters who do creepy things, audiences are likely to remember them better than ones without strange peccadilloes. In the case of Hereditary, the devil truly is in the details. The slow-burn family fright fest has one particular character who makes dolls out of found objects, and writer-director Ari Aster explains that’s all part of Charlie’s charm.
Charlie, played by newcomer Milly Shapiro, is easily Hereditary‘s early standout; she’s the most troubled member of the Graham family, and the one most affected by the death of the family matriarch at the movie’s beginning. Aster explains Charlie has a “compulsion” to create these figures out of objects you’d otherwise find in trash, and that’s not limited to inorganic matter either… Yeah, she does some weird stuff for the sake of her “art.”
Dolls made of garbage are merely the tip of the horrifying iceberg in Hereditary, a movie that keeps you guessing, and makes sure your hands are ever poised to cover your eyes should horrendous things happen. (Spoiler: they do.)
Hereditary also stars Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, and Ann Dowd will begin its stranglehold on audiences’ psyches everywhere starting June 8.
Image: A24
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist and the host of the horror documentary series One Good Scare. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!
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