HEREDITARY (2018) Breakdown | Ending Explained, Easter Eggs, Hidden Details & Things You Missed

so hereditary is one of those movies that blew me away when I first watched it back in 2018. by far it's my favorite Aries to film and though I've already done a big breakdown on it I thought I'd revisit the movie to celebrate the release of Bowers afraid you see back when I made that first video in 2020 I was still learning the ropes and since then we bought new equipment hired editors and just tried to up our game in terms of the level that we pick movies apart I've never been happy with that

video because of how much I missed in the initial watch through and thus I've decided to return once more to this classic to an Earth all the hidden things in it throughout this video we'll be going through every creepy little detail it's ending and also why I love the movie so much this High concept horror was released during a time that there was a big Revival in the genre and alongside it we had movies like The Witch the double Rich the Apostle the ritual and a lot more they really broke the

mold and moved away from the stereotypical cheap jump scare tactic that so many movies relied on instead the film's laced with this feeling of dread that slowly Bells throughout it and this is seen right from the off we begin with an obituary for Ellen Lee and throughout the film we learn more and more about her and not only was she the grandmother and mother to the family that we focus on but she was also the queen of the cult of payment when doing my research I found that payments one of the e

ight Kings of hell and he has the ability to create hallucinations reanimate the dead and all sodogram flight these are all things that happen in the movie and you can kind of piece what's going on with them before we join them the morning well in his funeral now turns out that Ellen actually offered a person Charles so that he could be a vessel for payment and we see his name in this opening obituary we later learned that Charles took his own life and the note that he left accused her of trying

to put people inside of him this was diagnosed as schizophrenia but in hindsight we know that he was actually telling the truth now because of his death Alan couldn't offer up a vessel but this didn't stop her from carrying out her plans Ellen also had order named Annie and she patiently waited until she had a son named Peter however Annie and Ellen weren't really on speaking terms at the time and thus the evil grandma wasn't able to sink her claws in however they did repair the relationship ye

ars later and Annie had a daughter named Charlie named after her deceased brother Ellen apparently said that she wanted a boy and at one point we even see a customized map with the name Charles on it instead of Charlie they were clearly hoping that Annie would have another son but they may do and went ahead with putting the spirit of payment into Charlie however payment desperately desired a male body and thus he didn't grant them the riches that they'd been promised now the entire story of here

ditary centers around transferring payments spurred into Peter but in order to do this they have to carry out certain rituals there's a ton of foreshadowing and things that don't pay off until much later and we actually begin where we end with us getting a strong focus on the Treehouse this pulls out to Annie's Studio which is where we see several of her Miniatures before we then move into a recreation of Peter's Room the film does a Festival job in giving this idea that summing's constantly wat

ching the family and this is demonstrated perfectly in the opening as we get further into the model it then transitions into Peter's real room and this was done for a symbolic reason now personally I I've always taken this to show that the characters are like puppets that don't really have any control over what's going on this is given a little not too later on in the film many happens during one of the many classroom scenes we hear the story of Heracles and learn the analysis given is that the

character doesn't really have any control over their fate so he thinks he has control but let's all remember Sophocles wrote The Oracle so that it was unconditional meaning Heracles never had any choice right this is almost like a Greek tragedy in which the audience would watch the events play out where the characters unaware that an audience was there the way the Miniatures transform into the location also gives this idea that this is somewhat of a stage and if we're getting better then we're v

ery much watching an actor on set construct it much like these Miniatures a classroom analysis also surmises there were signs all around the characters that they refuse to acknowledge much like the people that we meet in the film because he literally refuses to look at all the signs that are being literally handed to him the entire play and he creates these Miniatures in order to comprehend and deal with certain situations but they could also signify that the cult have constructed their entire w

orld dolls appear throughout the film namely in Jones apartment and with Charlie he also makes her own using the heads of dead animals and they actually did a bit of viral marketing for the movie with the dolls being available on Etsy under the name crafts by Charlie Jean if you if you want to buy me something for Christmas I'll set up a PO Box mate and you can send that out looks great now the headings are also Rife in the movie too and we see from the picture of payment that he rides around wi

th three by his side these three are needed for the ritual to be carried out and in the movie this is represented by Ellen's beheading Charlie's and lastly Annie's early on in Peter's Room we get a little nod towards this and we can see Three Hats hanging up on his wall now before you go at me for reaching I think that the colors of these actually show that these have some significance and he's seen film wearing a denim shirt with white under it and this is the same as the Hat on the left Charli

e where's that giant orange hoodie much like the middle one and lastly Ellen wears cream like the one on the right now after Peter is woken up his dad Steve goes out of the tree house which is where we're introduced to Charlie even though it's freezing she still ends up sleeping here and this is where payment returns to in order to complete his rebirth it perfectly recontextualizes this happening scene and shows her payment felt at home here which is why he returns come the films close and the f

uneral itself is actually filled with cult members and any even remarks that it's surprising to see so many new people there it's heartening to see so many strange new faces here today she also mentions about how her mother was a well well I'll let Annie say it my mother was a very secretive and private woman she had private rituals private friends private anxieties these private rituals and private friends were all payment related and they had to keep things secret because of what they were act

ually up to yeah we also see Annie's necklace which is exactly the same as the one her mother wears in the casket when we get a close-up shot of it we can actually see the shapes in the center represent the three heads and this is symbol itself is in our tomb it appears throughout the film and later shows up on the post where Charlie's decapitated at before appearing in the Attic the two shows up on the mat in Joan's house and on the cover of the bug detailing payments history now Charlie spots

this and when she looks up she sees a man creepily smiling at her this is the same guy who shows up naked later on in the house and we catch him standing in the doorway after Peter discovers his dad's corpse anyway Charlie clicks her tongue at the funeral like and this is like a used to denote that the demon has moved from her into her brother they also do some brilliant shorthand as we see Charlie jumping away on a chocolate bar which he uses his comfort food in situations where she feels awkwa

rd my dad asks if it has nuts in it and this sets up both the reaction later on and while she feels like she has to go for the cake at the party when she's left on her own and the family returned home and there's a nice bit of sound Direction where we can actually hear people moving about the house before the family enter I'll boost the volume in case you missed that and listen again closely now I pointed that out in our initial breakdown but one thing I noticed on top of this is that Steven say

s that Charlie takes her shoes off everybody Charlie shoes off later on when Charlie's been walking outside in her socks and he also tells her to take them off before she takes her own shoes off we're going to this hey it starts off you're going to this party with your brother parents tend to do this when they're mad at the kids are constantly leaving Footprints about the house but in hindsight we know who this is later on in the movie when Peter comes in we can see there's muddy Footprints all

over the floor and it's likely that this isn't from the family instead I think these were left behind by the cult and Steve was angry there with footprints in the house all the time because they were constantly coming in and out later on we learned they moved Ellen's body to the attic and that a triangle had also been drawn on the floor both of which probably happened when people were leaving these mocks anyway after Steve says good night to Peter we cut to Charlie's room and then see all her do

lls later on we get a payment statue in the tree house and this actually somewhat resembles the figures that we get here The Stance is the same with the long legs and on the back shelf we can see one with a Golden Crown now Charlie and Peter both have opposite reactions to their Grandma dying with a ladder being lackadaisical to it whilst Charlie is clearly torn up and he says you know you were her favorite she wouldn't let me feed you because she needed to feed you and we actually see a picture

roughly the 24 minute Mark and here we can catch her feeding Charlie with a bottle be look closely there's actually a very important detail here and this highlights what the Wicked Woman was up to the top of the bottle has some weird green things floating around in it and this is the same as what Annie pulls out the tea that Joan gives a later on when going through her mother's possessions towards the end of the movie Annie briefly touches a green bottle now we can see that this says didn't he

of Crete a huge shout outs to and I can't believe this username sold my soul to paymen who pointed out on Reddit that this is actually a magical herb did any of credence believed to be something that can make someone astral project and leave their body so that others can then enter it Alan was feeding this to Charlie at a young age and joaned it to Annie so that she could be taken over too you also know from the diorama that she wanted to breastfeed the girl as well and he's had such a creepy ex

tra layer to the movie about control and possession possession can have a double meaning in this case with Ellen using her children as objects rather than seeing them as actual people and he says that Charlie never cried when she was born and throughout her childhood we know this is because of what's really going on now at this point she looks up and sees the words to Tony written on the wall this is where the polls from necromancy and little phrases like this appear throughout the movie lift ou

ch in pandemonium has scribbled in the house too with the former of these meaning open the latter means chaos and the words all have meanings that are rooted in possession now something sinister is definitely going on here and Annie discovers a book about notes on spiritualism with a letter from her mother his promises rewards and payments state that his followers would be showered with riches now after she turns out the lights we can make out Ellen's ghosts standing in the dark it's one of the

most unnerving parts of the movie and it's so creepy seeing her standing there in the darkness and the next day we see Charlie at school trying to stick the head of a toy back into its body but she's unable to do this at this point a bird flies into the classroom window and she ends up cutting this off for the figure this is when we catch one of the cult members watching her and she actually also appears in the Attic later on now on the opposite side of the school we see Peter and a lesson and a

t this point we also meet the girl Bridget she's played off as the typical love interest that doesn't really go anywhere but there's actually an extreme possibility that she's part of the cult too now in order to talk about this we have to go on at least I'm gonna blow your mind gonna blow your mind with period times so we know that at the very least that one of Peter's Pals was in The Cult of payment under the bleachers we catch him in his pile smoking and on the left we can see someone who has

a tied up ponytail come the end of the film we see in the treehouse that there is someone kneeling down to payment and this guy has the exact same haircut that his friend does here I did talk about this in our last breakdown but I felt I needed to bring this back up before we get into Bridget after Peter gives a dumb answer in class she ends up turning around in her seat and staring directly at him which is a bit out of place like no no girls ever stared at me like that before you know you know

what I mean you you can relate you're a loser as well either way though she plays a key role in the film and she's the person who takes Peter away at the party when he's supposed to be looking after Charlie this allows her to eat the cake which then leads into her beheading as Peter drives away and tries to get back home now we do see her Facebook profile later on and if we look at the wall of photos we can see one in the top right that has a lot of significance in here we see here with a raise

d arm and a hand bent forward which is summing at all certain notes payment this is what we see the statue in the tree house doing and it also happens to Peter in the classroom when The Possession takes hold if we look at the name on the tab along the top we can also see that his surname is mopay huge shout outs to the many face girl on Reddit but noticing this and it has its own meaning that ties in with the film this isn't exactly a common name like I I don't know anyone multi and I know at le

ast 10 people and if we look at the words Origins it actually means siren in case you don't know a siren was a creature that was thought to lure Sailors to their deaths and Bridget could be seen as a figure that draws Peter in anyway was it right what's it wrong I'll leave it up to you just comment please don't [ __ ] comment please I'm begging not after any discovers the triangle in her mother's room Steve learns Allen's body has been stolen from the cemetery he keeps his quiet from his wife to

not cause any more grief and she lies herself and says that she's going to see a movie instead she's attending a group counseling session and in hindsight if we pay attention to Joan on the right here we can see she's completely fixated on her now we've set aside some time for any newcomers that might like to speak so when the counselor asks if anyone would like to speak she immediately looks over to her almost willing her to talk and she stays staring at her until she decides to speak she brin

gs up how her mother had did AKA dissociative identity disorder this involves someone having multiple distinct personalities who could even come from her trying to offer herself up to payment later on John introduces herself to Annie and she talks about how she lost her son and also her grandson it was only through doing this watch through that I thought it might be connected to payment and potentially she could have tried to force them to become vessels as well now later on Joan performs the Se

ance with Annie and she does this through what she says is her grandson's favorite chalkboard however we know that was a [ __ ] lie as when Annie bumps into her in the car park we can see what she's been buying as the characters walk past her car if you pause it on the open trunk you can see that she's bought a chalkboard set including the one she later uses the cult are clearly trying to plant the idea into Annie's Hair that she needs to carry out his seons and this is also indicated when we se

e letters piling through the letterbox a separate flyer advertising as Seance is posted through over the top of these so that any will see this first before anything else she doesn't end up pretending though unless Jones steps in and makes things up with the chalkboard Ariana said that he used this to show the cult were constantly planning different ways to get the family and had Charlie's head not gone out the window with the deer then something else would have been used now I also think this g

rief scene has a lot going on beneath the surface and hearing any recount stories of her family's mental illness could play into the title itself the name hereditary has a lot going on with it and it can mean things passed on genetically through her family and he has almost set up her own family in a similar structure to what she had as a child without being a father mother son and a daughter on a first watch before the reveal of the supernatural elements uh I was sure this film would be about m

ental illness and how traits are passed on Down the Line This is what it seemed like when she was rattling off the issues about her family and it's possible that this is actually the case the now playing podcast went into when payment really came to the Forefront of myths and legends and this happened during the 15th century they dug up a Dutch figurehead who had pushed him forth who also had his own roots in the study of mental health he was the person who put for the idea that women accused of

being witches could actually be dealing with mental health issues and ariaster actually brought in elements of this into the movie it was only on this viewing that I even considered the entire plot of the film may just be the imaginings of someone having a psychotic breakdown the family history is definitely there to support that now one thing that you only learn in the supplemental material is that Steve's a therapist and that Annie was his patient her brother too went to his episode at the sa

me age that Steve is now and upon doing my research I encoded something else to support that it's all mental when looking up symptoms of schizophrenia it's said that people who suffer from it often see lights and people that aren't actually there this could potentially be the lights in the cult and though I do take things literally in the movie I love that there's another way that you can look at all of the elements either way the title hereditary is echoed in the credits in which we see one let

ter from each name dropping down into the next one this signifies the passing down of genetics much like how the possession of payment is passed down the family too anyway back in Peter's Room we see him blowing smoke out the window and if you pay close attention to the left side of the screen you can catch someone watching him due to the breath coming out their mouth in Charlie's room we see payments light and this is used throughout the film to highlight certain things this is a higher power s

tepping through the influence events and it leads Charlie outside which is where she Witnesses a ritual Peter spots it in the classroom and it also appears to Annie while she's working on a miniature the light appears at the blinds and then Annie seemingly knocks our paint pot which then draws attention to Jones number let's watch that again in slo-mo though and pay close attention to that blue bottle if you zoom in and look closely you'll see that Annie never actually touched the paint part and

that this fellow above its own accord it was purposely pushed to show Jon's number and the light tends to guide people but in the case of Peter it does have a hold over him you might notice that a beam of light shines down from the rafters directly onto Peta and then he starts to suffocate like his sister's not allergy the classroom scene is the classroom scene and he ends up smashing his head like it's the like button on this video anyway at the party he watches Bridget takes Peter upstairs an

d catch people watching a video on a laptop if you look closely this is actually showing a guillotine tying back to one of the key motifs in the film it's not long until Peter heads off and Charlie heads off too and all the theories I had about her being one of the big characters they go out the window and this is when the film took a massive left turn for me and I remember in the cinema that so many people had a different reaction to it there were some people that laughed others that gasped and

yeah I just remember this moment hitting harder then Charlie hit that post now Peter returns home in shock and Annie discovers her daughter's body in the morning which sends her into agonizing grief one thing that you wouldn't know unless you read the script is that annealing on the ground like this is supposed to foreshadow the end of the movie and how the cult will bow before payment Charlie is buried and we see her father going through her notepad which is when he comes across a sketch of a

bird this has been beheaded and it wears a crown and also has a beak that looks like scissors tying back to her cutting it off and he spends the night in the tree house with the hitters on to keep it warm and she truly feels lost without her daughter she was far closer to her than she was to her son and as soon as he shows up at the house she ends up driving out after being invited out by Joan we see the first clue that she was Ellen's friend and this comes from the Welcome outside her house Wel

come Matt oh it's kind of cute huh my mother used to embroidery once just like that and he talks about the time she almost set herself on fire and later she carries this out was a psychotic break and again it ties in this idea of mental health got back to the house and we get a better look at the miniature in which there's a house built on top of a house to me this is hereditary in itself and it shows how the past is built upon the past it goes beyond taking blood and genetics from people it's t

hings about them like their mannerisms that also get carried across and the idea of what a family should be which is what this represents we get tension at the dinner table and the family drama ramps up as the Cults start to close in now interestingly Annie at this point says to Peter something about how he always has that stupid face on his face and all I get back is that [ __ ] face on your face we don't really know what this means because Peter always seems pretty low-key and normal however i

f we look at some of the other scenes in the film that there is something could hint at what this means in one of the classroom scenes Peter sees an evil reflection of himself then we can catch this smiling back at him it's possible that this face is what Annie saw too and this is why she thinks he's walking around with that stupid face on his face now Annie is coerced into doing a seance and that night she sees ants crawling on her pillow and then around the room and of course will follow a que

en and with him gravitating towards her it could show that she's now being selected as the person to give up their son she follows these ants through lapida's room and they crawl over his head just like how they crawled over Charlie's at his point she Envision setting herself and Peter on fire which is when she's awakened and realizes it's a dream when discussing this ariaster said that and he's saying she wasn't trying to kill him she was trying to save him has its own meaning to it and he actu

ally had it within a subconscious that she had to save Peter from his fate but it's such a horrible thing to carry out that she's in denial she has to do it this is why she acts it out in dreams but upon waking up she buries it because she can't face up to it she carries out a seance that seems to bring Charlie into her and this explains how she becomes possessed later on at this point there's no going back and the Seance being carried out is the beginning of the end for the family occur to the

Knight and Peter awakens to see what looks like Charlie's standing over him in the corner of the room someone tries to pull his head off and though we never get confirmed who this is I I think it's clearly Annie she made the miniature before showing Peter with a missing head and this could be a case of her sleepwalking again now this could also explain what happens with the book in the next scene too and he goes to burn it and this sets her on fire however if we look at this from a different ang

le it could actually be her burning herself which we know is something she's done before are we Cody Jones and inside her house see a table mapped out with various items on it there's a triangle with Peter's face in the middle and this looks similar to the triangle on the floor that was discovered in Ellen's room there's also lots of Charlie's dolls and some dead animal heads now this foreshadows the ending and the three dolls we see kneeling down represent the figures we see kneeling to payment

the three animal heads show the three beheadings and they originally would have been on the three dolls we see kneeling they're all looking to the payment doll which has a bird's head and crown and this is of course similar to Charlie's drawing realizing the truth and he runs down the hall and we get a lingering shot on her neighbor's door showing the number 202 now I sold my soul to payment not me on on the guy on Reddit they had a great theory on what this could be and depending on whether Jo

nes home is 201 or 200 and may be tied in with payments Legend payman was said to be one of Lucifer's most loyal servants and in hell he ruled over 200 angels and that could be the case if the apartment's 200 and if it's Tier 1 it's my time with the fact that payments followers on Earth will call the 230 this Legion might be a bloody reach you know but we do hang on the 202 for a couple of seconds so just reading into it anyway after Joan shouts get out to Peter from across the street and he dis

covers the mat in photo of jion along with her mother going as back Peter sees a light in the hallway in his Steve writes an email about his consent surrounding Annie he gets an email showing what happened to Ellen's grave a corpse is discovered in the attic and though we probably can't show the missing head he can see payment symbols stitched into her dress Steve ends up picking Peter up from school and he's following a similar sort of story to what Annie's own father did the possession of ment

al stuff is clearly passed on down through the mother's side and much like her dad he finds himself in this unwinnable situation weirdly Peter and Stevia that the pair of played father and son before and they did joke about how they should do this every 10 years guys don't look anything alike though so [ __ ] knows why they keep getting cast like that but moving on now as he burns Annie stands there gasping and you can see a light wash she over here which is payment taking control now from here

we get an outside shot of the house and watch as we go from day to night this happens relatively quickly and it doesn't seem like anything is wrong however if we pause the frame on the nighttime shot you can actually see people standing out in the forest it goes by so fast that you might miss it but it's probably my favorite detail in the entire film now we see as Steve wakes up and looks about his room which also has a really creepy detail in it that you might miss if you boost the brightness y

ou can actually see Annie standing in the top corner and when I first noticed this I might have needed a change of boxes yikes now she later follows him downstairs and can be seen standing above him as Peter discovers his father at this point the Chase Begins with Peter shutting himself in the attic and Annie manages to make it in even though he loxes and the only way this is possible is if the cult members unlock it from the inside and we know that they are up in the attic Peter does what we'd

all do in this situation I think and man just makes a run for it right out the window definitely would risk the broken bones over whatever the [ __ ] this is but in his we can state it allows payment to take over it was said that the body was needed to be weakened and this happening means that he can finally take control we see the light touch his body and finally payments able to possess the male that he's been so Desperately Seeking now in our original breakdown we said the shadow you see floa

ting out the garden is Peter's Soul however this is wrong and this is actually Annie's corpse which has just been beheaded you hear the third of her body dropping down after the chicken wire makes its way through and from this point she then flies into the tree house as payment walks along we also see the body of their dog showing that the cult killed it so I couldn't alert the family up in the tree house we hear what's almost triumphant music you can get the sounds of bells and trumpets in the

Legends it said that payments arrival will be accompanied by these instruments hence why they're used in the score here Charlie's head is used on the Statue and we can also see payment symbol right on the chest the is a bird cage beside it too calling back to the ones that have appeared throughout the film and Joni calls payment Charlie as she explains exactly what's happening aryasta said that his intention with this line was to show that was never really a Charlie and that in her body was the

demon all along this is what the click means and we close out with a wide shot of the attic film The once more like Miniatures it appears like a stage and this continues the Thematic idea it's all part of some Greek tragedy that none of the characters could escape from this has its ties back to Classic films as well and Aries to set its meant to mirror the shot in the movie The Night of the hunter placing them side by side you can see how much it lines up and in the end that closes out the movie

really hope you enjoyed watching us go back through it and hopefully I pointed out some stuff that you've missed in the film we'll be back with another classic movie breakdown really soon so if you enjoyed this one then make sure you subscribe if you want to get access to these videos early then also consider joining our membership program where we post video like this as soon as they're made if you want to melts to watch then the power of Christ compels you to check out our Brighton of The Exo

rcist which will be linked on screen right now love revisiting that film and I hope you do too by the way I've been Paul I'll see you next time you take care yourself and enjoy the rest of the week peace