figure because of she has embraced the symbolic. This also explains her strained relationship with her children, especially with Peter because there is a severing of the maternal/child relationship in her desire to not have a child due to her problems with her own mother. Annie’s downfall is her desire to speak with Charlie after her death and her falling for her own mother’s ploy to get this to happen. Annie is falling into her desires for the fascinating abject world of ‘beyond death’ and instead of repelling it like Creed says is necessary, she embraces it and it becomes her self-annihilation. Creed also says that the central focus of popular horror is the confront the abject “in order to finally eject the abject and redraw the boundaries between the human and non-human,” and Hereditary completely throws that out the window (73). Instead there is a complete surrender to the abject, with the ending being the cult having won and transferred Charlie’s mind into Peter’s body, perhaps the line is drawn between human and non-human but it’s the non-human side that won. Which I found the entire end sequence baffling and hilarious, perhaps because it is so blatantly breaking this convention. Watching Annie’s body float up to the tree house and seeing the smiling, naked, old people and the ringing glorious music was just so funny and made any drama or horror before it seem in vain because it was just so all these weird old people could complete their weird cult ritual. I was thinking previously about how a lot of abject things are humorous to us, shit and vomiting are often the butt of jokes, and this success of abjection also seemed really funny because it was so bizarre and out of the ordinary.

One thing I did really like about the film is the idea of the lineage following the matriarchy and with that the interest in the knowing and exploration the source of birth or creation. Throughout the movie there is a sense that the Ellen is the one dictating the circumstances of the birth of Annie’s children in order to fulfill a prophecy. The men in the film are pawns, Steve is really focused on protecting his son and Peter is there to be the vessel for Charlie/Paimon. It is the women driving the fate of the family. I think there is a mythos around mothers and daughters in families as sites of knowledge and keepers of family secrets. The idea that mothers are the authority of abject things, provide knowledge of the abject body without shame, and represent the debt to nature and therefore the origins of birth, all come together to create this lineage of knowledge suppressed by the laws of patriarch but passed down through motherhood. Like the child that knows too much, women (specifically mothers) are frightening because they hold power in knowledge that threatens the patriarch. I like the uncanny feeling I get watching this film of now knowing enough about the history of the family or what Annie does or doesn’t know because it creates the space for a world of secrets guarded by the maternal figures. My imagination is set free to think about all the secrets in their family and if there are some in mine and if maybe one day I’ll get to break the uncanny and be privy to this knowledge. I doubt it will be as wacky as a cult of old naked weirdos unleashing a prince of hell.

Also, why was Annie forced to go to a group therapy session before her mother died???? Did I miss this or is this another secret we don’t get to know?