In the shadowed realms of modern horror, The Witch and Hereditary emerge as twin beacons of elevated terror, where psychological unraveling meets supernatural dread.
Robert Eggers’s The Witch (2015) and Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018) have redefined the boundaries of horror cinema, transforming genre staples into profound meditations on faith, family, and the fragility of the human mind. These A24 productions, often hailed as exemplars of "elevated horror," eschew cheap jump scares for slow-burning atmospheres that linger long after the credits roll. By pitting these masterpieces against one another, we uncover not just their individual brilliance but the shared evolution of a subgenre that prioritises emotional devastation over mere frights.
- Exploring the distinct yet complementary atmospheres of Puritan isolation in The Witch and familial implosion in Hereditary.
- Analysing stylistic innovations in cinematography, sound design, and performance that elevate both films beyond traditional horror.
- Tracing their cultural resonance and influence on contemporary horror’s shift towards arthouse sensibilities.
Puritan Shadows: The Witch’s Folk Horror Genesis
Robert Eggers’s debut feature plunges viewers into 1630s New England, where a banished Puritan family confronts an encroaching wilderness teeming with malevolent forces. Thomasin, the eldest daughter played with quiet intensity by Anya Taylor-Joy, navigates a world where piety crumbles under suspicion and desire. The film’s opening expulsion from the plantation sets a tone of inexorable doom, as the family’s farmstead becomes a pressure cooker of religious zealotry and unspoken sins. Eggers, drawing from historical transcripts of witch trials, crafts a narrative that feels authentically archaic, with dialogue lifted verbatim from period diaries to immerse audiences in a linguistically alien past.
The woodland itself emerges as the true antagonist, a labyrinthine entity symbolising the untamed chaos beyond God’s covenant. Scenes of the family’s crops failing and livestock mutating into grotesque forms underscore themes of divine abandonment, where every rustle in the trees hints at the Devil’s whisper. Eggers’s meticulous production design, from the thatched roof leaking shadows to the goat Black Phillip’s piercing gaze, builds a folk horror tapestry rich with pagan undercurrents. This is no mere ghost story; it is a excavation of colonial trauma, where gender roles suffocate women like Thomasin, forcing her towards emancipation through infernal bargain.
Central to The Witch‘s power is its restraint. Eggers favours wide shots that dwarf the characters against vast, indifferent landscapes, evoking the sublime terror of nature’s indifference. The climactic confrontation in the woods, bathed in moonlight and feverish ecstasy, crystallises the film’s thesis: repression breeds monstrosity. Taylor-Joy’s transformation from dutiful daughter to liberated witch is a masterclass in subtle physicality, her wide eyes reflecting both terror and temptation. Here, horror transcends spectacle, becoming a visceral exploration of adolescence amid apocalyptic faith.
Familial Abyss: Hereditary’s Grief-Fuelled Inferno
Ari Aster’s Hereditary shifts the horror inward, to the crumbling dynamics of the Graham family following the death of matriarch Ellen. Annie Graham, portrayed by Toni Collette in a career-defining performance, unravels as grief morphs into obsession. The film’s opening miniature tableau establishes a motif of inherited doom, where tiny replicas of tragedy foreshadow real-world devastation. Aster constructs a domestic nightmare, transforming the family home into a claustrophobic maze of inherited curses and psychological fractures.
What distinguishes Hereditary is its unflinching gaze on mourning’s corrosive effects. Charlie’s decapitation scene, a gut-wrenching pivot, shatters the illusion of normalcy, propelling Peter into guilt-ridden paranoia. Collette’s Annie embodies maternal ferocity turned feral, her sleepwalking seizures and seance outbursts channeling raw, unfiltered anguish. Aster layers supernatural elements atop emotional realism, making the demonic possession feel like an extension of generational trauma rather than a contrived plot device. The cult’s shadowy machinations reveal a conspiracy woven through bloodlines, echoing real-world cults’ insidious recruitment.
Visually, Pawel Pogorzelski’s cinematography weaponises light and shadow within confined spaces. The attic’s occult sigils glow ominously, while repetitive head tilts among the possessed evoke uncanny doll-like rigidity. Sound design amplifies isolation: distant claps, muffled sobs, and a score by Colin Stetson that mimics laboured breathing. Aster’s pacing masterfully escalates from subtle unease to operatic horror, culminating in a finale of biblical proportions where the house itself becomes a hellish womb birthing Paimon.
Atmospheric Kinship: Soundscapes of Dread
Both films excel in auditory terror, deploying silence and dissonance as narrative forces. In The Witch, Mark Korven’s score utilises antique instruments like the nyckelharpa, its wailing tones evoking medieval lamentations that pierce the pastoral quietude. The absence of sound during key horrors—such as the baby’s disappearance—heightens primal fear, forcing viewers to confront the void. Eggers’s historical fidelity extends to foley, with authentic 17th-century tools scraping and thudding to immerse in sensory authenticity.
Hereditary counters with Stetson’s avant-garde minimalism, woodwinds and percussion mimicking organic unease. The recurring piano motif during family dinners underscores fracturing bonds, while amplified mundane noises—like a lightbulb flickering—build anticipatory tension. Both soundtracks reject bombast for subtlety, mirroring elevated horror’s ethos: terror blooms from the familiar made alien. This sonic synergy amplifies thematic parallels, where external wilderness in The Witch finds echo in internal domesticity of Hereditary.
Performance Pyres: Acting as Exorcism
Anya Taylor-Joy’s breakout in The Witch captures innocence’s erosion, her porcelain features cracking under patriarchal scrutiny. Ralph Ineson and Kate Dickie’s parents embody fanaticism’s toll, their prayers devolving into hysteria. In Hereditary, Collette’s tour de force dominates, oscillating between tenderness and rage; her hammer scene remains a visceral pinnacle of onscreen breakdown. Alex Wolff’s Peter conveys adolescent fragility, his possession scenes blending vulnerability with vacancy.
Milley Shapiro’s Charlie, with her unsettling click-tongue tic, haunts as preternatural harbinger. Supporting casts in both films ground the supernatural in human frailty, elevating archetypes into fully realised psyches. Directors demand physical commitment—Taylor-Joy’s nudity in ritual, Collette’s contortions—forging performances that blur actor and avatar, leaving indelible psychic scars.
Visual Alchemy: Cinematography’s Dark Arts
Eggers and Pogorzelski wield cameras as conjurers. The Witch‘s natural light from candles and overcast skies crafts chiaroscuro intimacy, Jarin Blaschke’s frames composing tableaux vivants of dread. Static long takes observe the family’s dissolution, mirroring Puritan fatalism. Aster’s Steadicam prowls Hereditary‘s interiors, Dutch angles distorting reality during seizures. Symmetry fractures into chaos, symbolising order’s collapse.
Both eschew handheld frenzy for deliberate composition, special effects integrated seamlessly: practical goat prosthetics in The Witch, animatronic decapitations in Hereditary. This restraint honours horror’s roots while innovating, proving elevated terror thrives on implication over excess.
Thematic Convergences: Faith, Family, and Fate
Patriarchal structures crumble in both: The Witch indicts theocratic oppression, Hereditary matrilineal cults subverting nuclear ideals. Isolation amplifies paranoia, whether frontier exile or suburban grief. Supernatural incursions expose repressed desires—sexuality in Thomasin, inheritance in Annie—positing horror as cathartic purge. National psyches resonate: American Puritan guilt versus modern atomisation.
Influence permeates: The Witch nods to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Hereditary to Rosemary’s Baby. Yet they pioneer, spawning imitators like Midsommar and Relic. Production tales enrich lore: Eggers’s exhaustive research, Aster’s personal loss informing grief portrayal.
Legacy endures in festival acclaim and box-office defiance of conventions, proving intellectual horror commercially viable. They challenge viewers to confront existential voids, where salvation eludes the faithful and damned alike.
Director in the Spotlight
Ari Aster, born in 1986 in New York City to a Jewish family with Eastern European roots, emerged as a provocative voice in horror after studying film at the American Film Institute. His short The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011), a disturbing Oedipal tale, garnered festival buzz for its unflinching domestic violence portrayal, signalling his affinity for psychological extremity. Aster’s feature debut Hereditary (2018) propelled him to auteur status, earning critical adoration and Collette’s best actress accolades from multiple critics’ groups.
Following with Midsommar (2019), a daylight folk horror dissecting break-up grief, Aster cemented his reputation for sunlit terrors contrasting nocturnal norms. Beau Is Afraid (2023), starring Joaquin Phoenix, expanded into three-hour surreal odyssey blending horror, comedy, and maternal fixation. Influences span Ingmar Bergman, David Lynch, and Roman Polanski, evident in his ritualistic structures and familial dissections. Aster’s scripts, often semi-autobiographical, probe trauma’s inheritance, as in Hereditary‘s basis in his anxieties.
Key filmography includes: The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011, short: father-son abuse tableau); Hereditary (2018: grief unleashes demonic cult); Midsommar (2019: Swedish festival devours tourists); Beau Is Afraid (2023: paranoid quest through nightmarish America). Upcoming projects whisper Eden, promising further genre subversion. Aster’s meticulous prep, including actor immersion workshops, yields raw authenticity, positioning him as horror’s intellectual vanguard.
Actor in the Spotlight
Toni Collette, born Antonia Collette on 1 November 1972 in Sydney, Australia, rose from stage roots to global stardom. Discovered in high school theatre, she debuted in Spotlight (1989) before Muriel’s Wedding (1994) showcased her comedic verve, earning Australian Film Institute nods. Hollywood beckoned with The Sixth Sense (1999), her ghostly mother role netting Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.
Versatility defined her: dramatic turns in The Boys Don’t Cry (1999), musical triumph About a Boy (2002), horror pinnacle Hereditary (2018). Accolades include Emmy for The United States of Tara (2009-2011), Golden Globe for Olivier Twist wait no, for Tara. Recent: Knives Out (2019), I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020). Theatre credits: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2019 Broadway).
Filmography highlights: Muriel’s Wedding (1994: bridal dreamer); The Sixth Sense (1999: bereaved mum); Shaft (2000: action heroine); About a Boy (2002: quirky single mum); Little Miss Sunshine (2006: dysfunctional kin); The Way Way Back (2013: mentor); Hereditary (2018: tormented widow); Knives Out (2019: scheming nurse); Nightmare Alley (2021: carnival fortune teller). Mother of two, Collette advocates mental health, her Hereditary performance drawn from personal loss, embodying horror’s emotional core.
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Bibliography
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Jones, A. (2020) Elevated Horror: A24 and the New Wave. University of Texas Press.
Knee, M. (2019) ‘Grief and the Demonic in Hereditary’, Film Quarterly, 72(4), pp. 45-52. Available at: https://filmquarterly.org (Accessed: 15 October 2024).
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West, A. (2023) Performances of Possession: Collette in Hereditary. Palgrave Macmillan.