Ari Aster burst onto the moviegoing public’s radar in the summer of 2018 with his feature directorial debut, Hereditary. Critics hailed it as The Exorcist for a new generation, which is certainly a high level of praise. And that praise is earned: Hereditary eschews jump scares in favor of more organic moments of terror that suit the characters’ emotions, an overbearing creepy atmosphere, and a palpable sense of suspense and mystery.
Toni Collette was snubbed by the Oscars for her riveting lead performance as Annie Graham, and the movie plays just as well as a harrowing family drama as it does a horror film. Here are some interesting behind-the-scenes details about Hereditary.
Ari Aster Originally Didn’t Write Hereditary As A Horror Movie
When Ari Aster was first collecting ideas for what would eventually become Hereditary, he wrote it as a straight drama about a family dealing with the sudden death of a loved one.
He got halfway through the script when he realized it would work well as a horror story and went back and rewrote it into the movie that it ended up becoming. Before then, Aster had intended to make Midsommar as his first horror film.
An Australian Theater Accidentally Played The Trailer Before Peter Rabbit
A movie theater in Innaloo, Western Australia, accidentally played the shocking trailer for Hereditary ahead of a screening of the PG-rated family film, Peter Rabbit. The screening room was filled with families, who promptly fled the room before their children were traumatized any more than they already had been.
The theater owners were extremely remorseful about the mix-up and offered the moviegoers free passes as a means of apology.
Alex Wolff Actually Wanted To Break His Own Nose In The Desk Scene
For the scene in which Peter slams his own face against his desk, Alex Wolff wanted to do some DiCaprio-style method acting and actually break his own nose. However, director Ari Aster politely told him he didn’t have to do that, and that they’d give him a cushioned desk to use in the scene.
When they actually shot the scene, Wolff slammed his head into the desk and found that only the top half was made out of foam. The bottom half was hard, and Wolff dislocated his jaw on it.
The House Was Built On A Soundstage
The Grahams’ house was built on sets on a soundstage in Utah, where the movie is set, so they could follow director Ari Aster’s meticulously prepared shot list (he wrote a 75-page shot list before the crew had even done a location scout). In order to capture certain shots, the production team needed to be able to take out walls and ceilings to make the rooms look more like Annie’s miniatures.
The production designer in charge of this worked very closely with the miniaturist, crafting all the miniatures so that the actual house would line up perfectly with the miniature house.
Toni Collette Wore A Prosthetic Neck For The Decapitation Scene
For the terrifying scene near the end of the movie in which a possessed Annie floats above Peter and uses a wire saw to cut off her own head, Toni Collette wore a prosthetic neck and hacked into it with a piano wire.
Due to the light weight of wire saws, they tend to be carried by backpackers. Since the Graham family lives in the mountains of Utah, it’s pretty plausible that there’d be a wire saw in their attic.
Making The Chalk Write On The Chalkboard Required A Tiny Magnet
For the seance scene in which the chalk magically moves itself around and writes on the chalkboard (supposedly controlled by a ghostly spirit), the production team had to put a magnet in the chalk and then place a magnet on the other side of the chalkboard and write backwards with it.
Since the chalk still needed to write smoothly, the trickiest task was finding a magnet small enough to fit inside the chalk.
Milly Shapiro Enjoyed Hanging Out Of The Car Window
Milly Shapiro said that her most memorable moment from filming Hereditary was hanging out of the car window. One of the best marketing tricks in Hereditary was not spoiling Charlie’s death, and instead making it look like she was a prominently featured major character (similar to the marketing of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho as a Janet Leigh vehicle).
Shapiro said that hanging out of the car window, driving at 30 mph, tethered to the interior of the car to prevent a real-life accident, felt like riding on a roller coaster.
Charlie’s Decapitation Is Similar To A Real-Life 2004 Incident
The scene in which Charlie’s head is taken off when Peter swerves his car out of the way of some roadkill is similar to a real-life event that took place in Marietta, Georgia, in 2004. A young man and his friend were driving home from a party, drunk. The friend poked his head out of the window as he feared he was going to throw up.
The driver swerved near a pole and a wire sliced off the passenger’s head. However, the driver was so drunk that he didn’t notice his friend had been decapitated. He drove home, parked in his parents’ driveway, and went to sleep.
Ari Aster Used As Many Practical Effects As Possible
Director Ari Aster only used CGI effects as a last resort. If an effect could be done practically, he wanted to do it practically.
This meant that the special effects team had to come up with ways to create effects they’d never created before, like making a candle light itself.
The Cast Coincidentally Had The Same Dynamic As The Family
Coincidentally, Gabriel Byrne and Alex Wolff had already worked together on HBO’s In Treatment, and Wolff knew Milly Shapiro from school (they both attended the Professional Children’s School). This worked out well for the family dynamics in the film, because it meant that Toni Collette was the outsider of the cast, reflecting Annie’s own place as the outsider in her own family.
Before making Hereditary, Collette had told her agent that she didn’t want to make any more dark, heavy movies and just wanted to do comedies. However, she liked the script for Hereditary so much that she made an exception.
