In the quiet corners of family homes, dread festers like an unspoken curse—two films prove that blood ties can bind us to unimaginable horrors.
Modern horror has a penchant for turning the domestic sphere into a battleground for the supernatural, where everyday routines unravel into psychological torment. Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018) and Bryan Bertino’s The Dark and the Wicked (2020) stand as towering achievements in this subgenre of familial dread, each dissecting the fragility of family bonds under the weight of inherited evil. By pitting these films against one another, we uncover not just shared terrors but subtle divergences in tone, technique, and terror that elevate them beyond mere scares.
- Aster’s operatic grief in Hereditary contrasts with Bertino’s stark rural isolation in The Dark and the Wicked, revealing how setting amplifies familial collapse.
- Both master slow-burn dread through sound and silence, but Aster’s symbolic visuals clash with Bertino’s raw minimalism for maximum unease.
- Performances anchor the horror—Toni Collette’s explosive anguish versus Marin Ireland’s restrained despair—proving acting as the emotional core of family nightmare cinema.
When Home Becomes Hell: Hereditary vs. The Dark and the Wicked
The Inheritance of Agony
The premise of Hereditary revolves around the Graham family, whose matriarch Ellen has just passed away, leaving behind a legacy far more sinister than mere heirlooms. Annie Graham, a miniaturist obsessed with replicating her life in dollhouse perfection, grapples with her mother’s death alongside husband Steve, teenage son Peter, and younger daughter Charlie. What begins as a mourning process spirals when Charlie’s bizarre behaviour and sudden decapitation in a freak accident unleashes a demonic force tied to the cult of King Paimon, a figure from occult lore demanding a male host. Aster weaves this narrative with meticulous detail, from the eerie dioramas symbolising entrapment to the grandmother’s hidden cult artifacts, culminating in a possession that shatters the family’s facade of normalcy.
In parallel, The Dark and the Wicked traps siblings Louise and Michael on their decaying Texas farm, summoned by their father’s terminal illness and mother’s erratic decline. Bertino crafts a leaner tale: the siblings witness their mother’s self-harm, animal mutilations, and a shadowy entity that whispers temptations of suicide. No elaborate mythology here—just primal evil exploiting isolation. The mother’s Bible-thumping faith crumbles as she hangs herself, leaving the siblings to confront a force that preys on their guilt and abandonment issues. Key moments, like the demon’s grotesque nail-ripping manifestation or the father’s silent suffering, build a tapestry of unrelenting bleakness.
Both films hinge on inheritance, but Hereditary intellectualises it through generational occultism, drawing from real-world demonology texts like the Lesser Key of Solomon, while The Dark and the Wicked renders it viscerally personal, echoing folk horror traditions of rural curses. This contrast highlights how Aster intellectualises dread via exposition-heavy seances and cult diagrams, whereas Bertino opts for implication, letting the siblings’ fractured bond speak volumes without dialogue.
Character arcs further diverge: Annie’s arc explodes from repressed grief to demonic rage, her head-banging seizure a pinnacle of body horror. Louise, conversely, internalises her torment, her quiet breakdowns evoking the slow poison of farm life drudgery. Peter’s guilt over Charlie’s death mirrors Michael’s paternal regrets, yet Aster amplifies youthful innocence lost through hallucinatory guilt trips, while Bertino grounds it in adult resignation.
Dread in the Domestic Frame
Aster’s cinematography in Hereditary, courtesy of Pawel Pogorzelski, employs wide-angle lenses and overhead shots to dwarf characters within their own home, turning staircases into abyssal drops and treehouses into occult lairs. The film’s colour palette shifts from warm domesticity to desaturated hellscapes, symbolising emotional decay. Iconic scenes, like Charlie’s tongue-clicking tic or the attic ritual with decapitated pigeon heads, use practical effects to blend the mundane with the macabre, evoking Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby in its apartment-as-prison motif.
Bertino counters with a documentary-like grit in The Dark and the Wicked, shot by Magdalena Gorka on stark 35mm for a grainy authenticity that mirrors the siblings’ entrapment. Long takes of empty fields and creaking barns amplify isolation, with shadows encroaching like living entities. The nail scene, where the demon peels back flesh to reveal eyes beneath, utilises prosthetics by Barrie Gower for shocking intimacy, contrasting Aster’s grander illusions. Bertino’s rural setting invokes The Witch‘s Puritan paranoia but strips away period flair for contemporary despair.
Sound design becomes the third character in both. Hereditary‘s score by Colin Stetson layers woodwinds and dissonance to mimic familial discord, peaking in the clapping cult ritual that reverberates like thunderous judgment. Silence punctuates jumpscares, such as the car crash’s abrupt finality. Bertino employs wind howls, distant goat bleats, and whispered incantations to create a soundscape of abandonment, where the mother’s humming lullaby twists into suicidal dirge. This auditory minimalism heightens tactile horrors, like the squelch of rotting meat.
Mise-en-scène reinforces themes: Graham miniatures reflect fractured psyches, their perfection mocking chaos, while the farm’s clutter—rusty tools, bloodied hay—embodies neglect. Both directors use doorways as liminal portals, but Aster’s are ornate thresholds to madness, Bertino’s splintered barriers barely holding evil at bay.
Unraveling the Family Tapestry
At their core, these films dissect family as both sanctuary and slaughterhouse. Hereditary explores matriarchal control, with Ellen’s shadow puppeteering descendants via cult manipulation, critiquing how parental expectations birth monsters. Annie’s ambivalence towards motherhood manifests in her enabling of Charlie’s oddities, exploding into blame games post-tragedy. Peter embodies the collateral innocent, his possession a metaphor for adolescence hijacked by adult sins.
The Dark and the Wicked shifts to paternal absence and sibling estrangement, the parents’ farm a symbol of inherited failure. Michael’s reluctance to engage underscores male emotional stunting, while Louise’s caretaking role exposes gendered burdens in rural America. Their final standoff against the demon underscores how family secrets—neglect, abuse hints—feed supernatural predation.
Gender dynamics sharpen the comparison: Collette’s Annie weaponises grief into fury, reclaiming agency through horror, whereas Ireland’s Louise succumbs passively, her screams muted by fatalism. Both indict heteronormative nuclear units, with absent fathers (literal in Bertino, symbolic in Aster) leaving women to bear demonic brunt.
Class undertones simmer: the Grahams’ middle-class suburbia affords therapy sessions futile against cultism, mocking privilege’s impotence. The farm family’s working-class grit offers no escape, their poverty amplifying dread in a godforsaken nowhere.
Supernatural Shadows and Symbolic Fury
Demons drive both plots, but execution differs profoundly. Paimon in Hereditary boasts elaborate lore—gender-swapping djinn from Ars Goetia—unveiled via decayed books and Annie’s research frenzy. Aster balances overt reveals with ambiguity, the final decapitation orgy a cathartic blasphemy blending The Exorcist with Midsommar‘s paganry.
Bertino’s entity remains nameless, a biblical Adversary stalking the faithful, its manifestations—black-eyed goat, inverted cross—rooted in Christian horror like The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Practical effects shine in the suicide noose tightening autonomously or flesh-tearing climaxes, prioritising visceral over verbose.
Special effects warrant scrutiny: Hereditary blends CGI wirework for levitations with Legacy Effects’ puppets for Charlie’s headless rampage, innovative for indie scale. Bertino favours in-camera tricks—mirrored reflections, forced perspectives—for authenticity, his creature design by Odd Studio evoking The Strangers‘ home invasion ethos.
Influence traces back: Aster nods to The Shining‘s hotel hauntings, Bertino to Hereditary itself in grief motifs, forming a dread lineage from The Amityville Horror to folk revivals.
Performances that Pierce the Soul
Toni Collette’s tour de force in Hereditary spans hysteria to horror, her seance convulsions raw physicality earning acclaim. Alex Wolff’s Peter conveys teen bewilderment turning to otherworldly poise, Milly Shapiro’s Charlie unnerves with alien mannerisms. Ensemble chemistry sells implosion.
Marin Ireland’s Louise in The Dark and the Wicked simmers with quiet devastation, eyes conveying abyss-gazing. Michael Abbott Jr.’s Michael broods effectively, Julieoligiac Torrance’s mother channels zealot fanaticism. Supporting turns, like Xander Berkeley’s tragic father, amplify intimacy.
These portrayals elevate scripts: Aster demands operatic range, Bertino naturalistic restraint, both yielding career-best work amid low-budget constraints.
Behind the Nightmares: Production Perils
Hereditary‘s A24 backing allowed ambition, but Aster’s 35-day shoot taxed cast—Collette’s immersion method acting led to exhaustion. Reshoots refined ending, budget ballooning to $10 million for effects polish. Censorship dodged via US rating, though international cuts softened gore.
Bertino’s Shudder production squeezed micro-budget ingenuity, 18-day rural shoot battling weather, COVID delays pushing release. No major hurdles, but intimacy fostered authentic terror, premiering virtually to acclaim.
Legacy endures: Hereditary grossed $80 million, spawning discourse on mental health vs. supernatural; The Dark and the Wicked cult status via festival buzz, influencing indie dread wave.
Eternal Echoes in Horror Canon
These films redefine family horror, Aster’s arthouse ascent paving for Midsommar, Bertino reclaiming post-Strangers form. Together, they affirm dread’s potency over jumpscares, influencing Smile and Barbarian in domestic hauntings. Viewers emerge questioning hearth’s safety, a testament to cinema’s lingering chill.
Director in the Spotlight
Ari Aster, born July 31, 1986, in New York City to a Jewish family with roots in Israel and Poland, grew up immersed in horror classics courtesy of his filmmaker father. He studied film at Santa Clara University, honing shorts like The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011), a disturbing incest tale that premiered at Slamdance and caught A24’s eye. Aster’s thesis feature Munchausen (2013) explored hypochondria’s psychosis, blending psychological depth with visceral unease.
His feature debut Hereditary (2018) catapulted him to auteur status, earning Rotten Tomatoes’ Certified Fresh with 90% approval and box office triumph. Influences span Bergman, Polanski, and Kubrick, evident in ritualistic precision. Midsommar (2019) followed, transposing folk horror to daylight Swedish commune, grossing $48 million amid acclaim for Florence Pugh. Beau Is Afraid (2023), starring Joaquin Phoenix, veered surreal comedy-horror, exploring maternal paranoia on $35 million budget.
Aster founded Square Peg production, directing Beau‘s script originally titled Mother. He’s penned unproduced works like Somasphere, eyeing Westerns. Awards include Gotham nominations, Saturn nods; he’s horror’s intellectual torchbearer, blending trauma therapy with occult grandeur. Filmography: The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011, short); Munchausen (2013, short); Hereditary (2018); Midsommar (2019); Beau Is Afraid (2023).
Actor in the Spotlight
Toni Collette, born November 1, 1972, in Sydney, Australia, as Antonia Collette, rose from ballet dreams to acting after The Boys stage debut at 16. Discovered via Spotswood (1992), she earned Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup for Muriel’s Wedding (1994), breakout as depressed bride-to-be. Hollywood beckoned with The Sixth Sense (1999), Oscar-nominated as grieving mother.
Versatile career spans drama (The Hours, 2002), comedy (About a Boy, 2002), horror (The Descent, 2005). Emmy wins for United States of Tara (2009-2011) multiple personalities; Golden Globe for Tsunami: The Aftermath (2006). Theatre triumphs include Broadway The Wild Party (2000). Recent: Hereditary (2018) frenzy, Knives Out (2019), I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020), Dream Horse (2020), Nightmare Alley (2021), The Staircase (2022 miniseries).
Collette’s 50+ films showcase chameleon range, motherhood to three influencing raw maternal roles. Activism for women’s rights, environment; married since 2003 to musician Dave Galafaru. Filmography highlights: Muriel’s Wedding (1994); The Sixth Sense (1999); Shaft (2000); Changing Lanes (2002); In Her Shoes (2005); Little Miss Sunshine (2006); The Black Balloon (2008); Jesus Henry Christ (2011); The Way Way Back (2013); Enough Said (2013); Tammy (2014); Hereditary (2018); Velvet Buzzsaw (2019); Like a Boss (2020).
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