Matriarchs, Madness, and May Queens: The Feminine Horror of Hereditary and Midsommar

Hey spookies and welcome to another Graveyard Shift and welcome to a merging of the last two parts! I’m bringing these together here as a bonus for those who prefer to read multi part posts all in one. Feel free to skip this one if you’ve already read both parts separately! No hard feelings here! We’ll be looking at Ari Aster’s films Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019). While they are very different movies, one dealing with supernatural possession and the other with a Swedish cult, they both have themes of loneliness and mental health and talk about modern ideals of individualism, family, and toxic relationships. And yes, that is a recipe for two absolutely wild films. They are so often linked together, coming out almost exactly a year apart – minus about ten days –  even by Aster himself as the production times were effectively one right after another. And it might seem obvious, but spoilers for both films incoming. So, what happens in the films and what does it mean? Let’s talk about that.

Hereditary really starts and ends with Ellen. The film starts with Ellen’s death and funeral. It’s easy to think this is the end of her role in the film, not even five minutes in, but she is maybe one of the main driving forces of conflict throughout the whole film. When Annie goes to the group support meeting, we learn a lot about Ellen and about their relationship. We learn that mental illness claimed the lives of Annie’s brother and father, and it was ever present throughout her mother’s life. We learn that Ellen was the one who pressured Annie into having children in the first place, and that while Annie kept Ellen away from Peter with some help from Steve, Annie allowed Ellen to be in Charlie’s life. Ellen immediately asserted herself as a sort of second mother figure for Charlie and Annie tells us how guilty she feels for letting her mother influence not just her life but her family’s lives to the extent she has. This is a lot of information for one scene, and to start to break it down, we look at how individuality is a root of horror here.

To start with, Ellen pushes Annie into having children, raising the question of would Annie have had children if it weren’t for her mother’s influence? Both Ellen and Annie’s father suffered mental illness, which makes it possible to pass down a genetic predisposition for mental illness as we can see in Annie’s brother. Annie herself also seems to be struggling mentally, and sadly it just gets worse throughout the film. She becomes more irrational and paranoid, we see her taking medication, she has outbursts of anger and uncontrollable emotion. With how guilty Annie seems to constantly feel, it wouldn’t be a difficult assumption that she would be worried about having biological children and passing that predisposition for mental illness down to them.

This comes into the territory of individuality abjection. Abjection is a theory put forward by Julie Kristeva and is used by a good many film theorists. Barbara Creed uses it as a launching pad for her book “The Monstrous Feminine” which is a great read if you enjoy reading theory. I read the whole thing because I am a giant nerd for film theory. Abjection is the capital O Other, the Other from the self, that which disrespects societal boundaries. This is part of why horror is so subjective and so based on personal and societal experiences. Ellen disrespects the boundaries of Annie’s individuality and personhood by forcing her into having biological children. In this sense, Ellen is representative of the pro-life movement. If you don’t know, the pro-life movement is a group who want to preserve life in any circumstance, including protesting to make abortion illegal. They’ve had an unfortunate history of violence, including a one Michael Frederick Griffin, who fatally shot a doctor who performed abortions during a pro-life protest rally in 1993. Dr David Gunn is considered the first murder specifically in the name of preventing abortions. The sad thing is, back alley abortions were always around in the days of highest legal regulations preventing abortions. What legislation has done is make abortion safer. To me it seems that the anti abortion movement is seeking to take away that safety in the name of ‘saving the unborn’.

A counter argument to the pro-life movement is often the question of how is it pro-life to disregard the wishes of the mother of her life and to ignore that the mother may not be able to provide a good quality of life to the child or even survive birth. Ellen isn’t caring about what Annie wants, or the quality of life unborn Peter and Charlie may have, her focus is on a host for Paimon. And throughout all this, where is Annie’s individuality? Her choice? Western society has a tendency towards focus on individualism, towards personal success and happiness. As a parent, you’re told to care for your children and to allow them growth and personhood. Ellen appears to have zero concern for this in her children, as she becomes what Barbara Creed calls the Archaic Mother; the mother who isn’t concerned with her child’s wellbeing but rather using the child as a means to an end.

Paimon needs a male host to come to full power. Ellen’s first attempt must have been her own son, Annie’s brother. Annie tells us that her brother had schizophrenia and when he committed suicide, he blamed Ellen for ‘putting people in him’. This tells us Ellen was trying to use Annie’s brother as a host for Paimon but he couldn’t cope. Ellen then moved onto Annie to pressure into having children, using her powers as the Archaic Mother to manipulate Annie. But when Annie had Peter, Steve helped her keep Ellen away from Peter. So when Annie fell pregnant with Charlie and started to allow Ellen back into her life, Ellen wanted so desperately for Charlie to be a boy, and Charlie says this herself the night after Ellen’s funeral. When Charlie was a girl, Ellen saw a new plan, a way into the family, a way to Peter. And then of course, her and her cult orchestrate the rest of the film, killing Charlie, inserting Joan into Annie’s life, and getting to Peter.

She is the Archaic Mother of not only Annie but also the cult; they refer to her as their queen, they carry out her bidding, they are what I’m going to call the Archaic Children. We see the Archaic Children again in Midsommar, in those who are in what they refer to as the summer of their lives and venture out into the world and bring outsiders back to the cult. While it can be argued that the whole cult aside from the elders such as Siv are the Archaic Children, I’m going to focus in on Pelle as Archaic Child. He is the one who brings back the most people, including Dani, the future May Queen. It seems that out of everyone who went on pilgrimage, only Pelle and Ingemar brought back outsiders. I think that Pelle knew that – if anyone he brought was going to be indoctrinated into the cult – it was going to be Dani. She was the most vulnerable out of the group, after her family’s death and the lasting impact of her relationship with Christian.

Dani clearly has an anxiety disorder. We see her taking her prescription for lorazepam under the brand name Ativan, and this shot holds, we are meant to see this and understand that it means she has an anxiety disorder. When we meet Dani she’s clearly having a panic attack, caused by the email she gets from her sister Terri. She calls Christian for support but pretends that she’s fine. We get an idea of what Christian thinks of mental illness when he says that Terri’s email is “an obvious ploy for attention”. He’s dismissive, and is subconsciously telling Dani that her panic attack is just a ploy for attention. When Dani is later on the phone to her friend, she tells her that she’s never seen Christian cry and she’s worried she’s pushing him away by relying on him. He is emotionally repressed and manipulative, as we see later when he tries to convince Dani she shouldn’t be upset about him going to Sweden, and again when he doesn’t seem to comprehend why Josh is upset about him effectively copying Josh’s dissertation idea. Personally, I know I’d be upset if I spent all that time and travelled to a whole other continent for my friend to nab my dissertation idea. In short, Christian is representative of toxic masculinity. He is the epitome of the child who was told ‘boys don’t cry’ and to ‘man up’ and this is the effect. He seems to struggle so much with forming healthy relationships and knows he should break up with Dani, he recognises that their relationship isn’t healthy but is scared of being by himself, is scared of not being able to cope on his own.

Meanwhile, Dani’s panic is completely justified, as we see Terri has committed muder-suicide and killed herself and their parents. After this trauma, Dani falls into darkness and despair until she convinces herself to go to that party where she finally learns about Sweden. Fast forward an argument, flight, and a panic attack, and Dani is welcomed to the Hårga cult. Important to note here that while Christian, Josh, and Mark are welcomed to the commune, Dani is welcomed home. I think the Hårgas knew all along that they would be able to bring Dani into their fold. It isn’t clear if the Hårgas had a way to contact people while they were away, maybe scheduled calls at the train station that was mentioned, but either way, they knew Dani would be vulnerable enough to be brought in.

Consider; cult indoctrination usually involves a process of breakdown of the self. This makes someone more susceptible to the control. However, Dani has already been through the trauma of losing her family and likely feeling that if she’d gotten in touch with her parents or with Terri she could have saved them, she likely feels responsible for their deaths and this kind of trauma can have a massively negative impact on the sense of self and self worth. She’s in pain. She’s likely sorely needing support and comfort. It’s no wonder she turns to the first people to show her this, the Hårgas. They don’t have to break her down to make her compliant. She’s already there. All they have to do is show her love and understanding and – as we see, she is theirs.

The ending of Midsommar left people confused about how they were meant to feel. Is this a happy ending of Dani finding a support system and a place to belong? Or is this a tragic ending of Dani losing her individuality? The thing is, it’s both. Dani has found the strength to leave Christian after gaining the support of the cult. She no longer has to feel alone or scared to lose toxic relationships for fear of being alone. Throughout the film, Pelle stands as her mirror. He, too, lost his parents but his main difference is he had the support system of the cult to ensure he never felt alone. Aster is telling us how important it is to have an emotional support system when recovering from trauma. Aside from the cult, Pelle is reasonably well adjusted; he’s smart, artistic, and good at being kind to others. Contrasted to that, Dani is taking a year out of university, from what we see, she seems to struggle to find joy in her old hobbies; she seems to stay in bed most of the time, the party seemed such a mammoth effort for her to go to and she seemed to be at least partly disassociating throughout it until the mention of the Sweden trip brings her back to the moment. For lack of a better analogy, she was in the darkness of her trauma until Pelle brought her to Sweden and into the light of the Hårgas. If that sounds familiar, it should because it’s exactly the same imagery as religion, focusing on Chrsitanity as this film is a product of western society. Religious extremism isn’t something that is new, unfortunately. It just takes a quick internet search to find the ever flowing stream of news on the topic. However, it all shares something in common of justifying horrible deeds by saying it’s for their god.

They believe life is sacred, seemingly aligning them with the pro-life movement, yet again, this calls into question the validity of the term pro-life as they are killing in the name of their beliefs. The Hårgas kill in the name of their beliefs, for the sake of keeping their privacy and their activities hidden from the outside world. They know that they will not be accepted by external society, western ideals of individualism directly conflict with the society of the Hårgas. The entire commune is the family unit, the individual happiness is not truly possible, the life cycle of one within the cult is mapped by the year. This is where Dani’s tragic ending comes in. Yes, she gained her support system but she lost her individuality. She lost her chance to chase after her own personal happiness. This also taps into the fear of the long lasting effects of trauma. Trauma can change a person so much that they may not be quite the same afterwards. It can be incredibly isolating, affecting physical responses to situations and how you handle interpersonal relationships.

We see some symptoms of PTSD in Dani; she experiences repeated flashbacks and hallucinations, she becomes isolated and withdraws into herself, with no real support system to help her through this. The best she has are Christian and his friends but, as we’ve discussed, Christian can’t allow himself to be vulnerable, and his friends don’t like Dani much anyway. This need for a support system is why vulnerable people are often drawn into cults, and this is what Aster is telling us about emotional dependency. It’s the same with toxic relationships; when Dani finds out about her sister and parents’ deaths it’s Christian she calls. We know by this point he wants out of the relationship, but despite being scared of pushing him away by relying on him too much, she calls him over and he comes to support her. It’s important to note that even though the relationship isn’t healthy, they are both toxic for each other. Christian and his toxic masculinity can’t support Dani in any meaningful way that would help her, and Dani and her struggles can’t support him in working through his issues and so they are both stuck, both suffering.

In the end, Dani is indoctrinated and Christian is burned to death stuck inside a bear surrounded by his dead friends. While Dani seems to get it better off than Anni, having gained a support system and, crucially, lived to the end of her movie, neither woman has it better. Both lost their individuality, Annie to possession and the Archaic Mother, Dani to The Archaic Mother and her children.

For both films, this individuality fear is the core message. The outbranching fears come into this; the fears of forced motherhood and abortion is at its core an individuality discussion and an argument over if individuality or potential life is more important. The reason why possession films can be so effective is because of the fear of losing individuality. Individuality is why cults are so scary. Trauma is scary for this reason, toxic relationships, it all stems back to that loss of individuality. Aster is playing on this, he’s playing on Western ideals of individuality and the societal importance put on it. There is so much depth within Aster’s films, I personally am incredibly excited to see what he does next. Let me know what you think below, and I’ll see you next time!