Welcome back to Behind The Scenes Saturday!!! Today is dedicated to Ari Aster’s directorial debut, Hereditary! Admittedly, I didn’t care for this film the first time I watched it, but I gave it another try, and I truly learned to appreciate it for what it was. So, be sure to check your attic more often, make sure no strangers are hanging out in your treehouse, and enjoy these fun pictures and bits of trivia!!

(Trivia provided by IMDb.com)

(Pictures provided by google.com and IMDb.com)

(SPOILER ALERT!!!)

• Toni Collette (Annie) previously told her agent that she only wanted to do comedies and she didn’t want to do any more heavy, dark films. However, when she read the script for this film, she fell in love with the story and couldn’t turn it down.
• Regarding the film’s director, Ari Aster, Toni Collette remarked that he’s the most prepared director she’s ever worked with. According to Collette, Aster practically had the film shot and edited in his head a good two years before they actually started filming.
• In order to prepare for their roles, Ari Aster asked Alex Wolff (Peter) and Milly Shapiro (Charlie) to go out to eat in character. They would sit for up to three hours in silence as Shapiro wouldn’t speak and Wolff would try to get her to talk.
• Ari Aster felt that Utah was the best setting for this film because the mountains were beautiful and breathtaking, yet menacing and ominous.
• Alex Wolff stated that the original cut of the film could have easily lasted more than 3 hours. The cut footage was mostly more family dialogue.

• Before even writing the screenplay, Ari Aster wrote detailed biographies and backstories on all of the characters.
• Instead of focusing on traditional horror jump scares, Ari Aster’s goal was to provide scares that were emotionally justified.
• Gabriel Byrne (Steve) and Alex Wolff previously worked together and Wolff and Milly Shapiro both went to the same school and knew each other before this film. Toni Collette was the outsider in this group, which the producer felt was perfect for the film. Collette being the outsider mirrored her character’s feeling of alienation within her own family.
• The film was shot in just 32 days.
• The chalkboard writing scene was accomplished with special effects using magnets in the chalk and under the chalkboard.

• To prepare for the set designs, the film’s production designer, Grace Yun did her own research on pagan rituals and cults.
• The film contained many effects that the special effects team had never done before, including making the candle light itself.
• Alex Wolff stated that this film was more demanding than anything he’d ever done.
• Because Gabriel Byrne and Alex Wolff played father and son before in In Treatment, they joked that they were going to play father and son every seven years.
• Alex Wolff decided to take the method route and insisted on only being referred to as Peter during filming. After shooting his last scene, Wolff symbolically introduced himself to the crew as Alex.

• The film’s composer, Colin Stetson felt that the score was its own character. He also provided his own vocals for the music.
• During the support group scene, Annie talked about how her brother committed suicide at age 16 and wrote in his note that it was because their mother, Ellen (Kathleen Chalfant) “put people inside of him.” This was most likely because Ellen attempted to conjure Paimon through her son. When he killed himself, that’s when Ellen pressured Annie to have children so she could try again.
• In a method attempt, Alex Wolff explained he was willing to really break his nose for the desk-slamming scene. Ari Aster declined and assured him that he’d be getting a soft, cushioned desk for the scene. Unfortunately, the desk wasn’t cushioned enough and Wolff slammed his head down so hard, that he ended up dislocating his jaw.
• When Ari Aster was pitching the film, his best description of it was “it’s a story about a long-lived possession ritual told from the perspective of the sacrificial lamb.”
• In the art store parking lot scene, you can see the newly purchased chalkboard in the back of Joan’s (Ann Dowd) car, showing that it wasn’t her grandson’s chalkboard and she purchased it to further trick Annie.

• During the party scene, when Peter enters the room to smoke weed, a couple of the other kids are watching The Execution Of Mary, Queen Of Scots, a short film featuring a decapitation. This foreshadows the multiple beheadings in the film.
• When Milly Shapiro recalled doing her stunt where she’s tethered to the car and partially hanging out of it, she described it as like being on a roller coaster.
• To get the effect done right for when Steve is lit on fire, pretty much everything in the room was made fireproof.
• As Peter looks at his father dead on the floor, you can see the piano in the living room tipped over. This is foreshadowing, showing us where Annie got the piano wire she decapitates herself with later.
• Ari Aster has a small cameo in the film. He is the person who called Annie about her exhibit date at the Archer Gallery.