What Happens in Hereditary? The Whole Plot, Spoiled
This page contains every spoiler in Hereditary, on purpose. That is the entire service. How scary is it? An 8 out of 10 cats, and that is the only number you get here: the rest are on the verdict page.
Hereditary is widely called the scariest movie of its decade. It is two hours and seven minutes long. I have summarized it below, and I can report that it is, at its core, a story about a family that should have started therapy in 1987.
The premise, briefly
A miniature artist's secretive mother dies and leaves the family the worst inheritance in cinema. It is not money. It is a demon king named Paimon, who has been waiting patiently for a male host since before you were born.
What actually happens
A funeral, a eulogy, and several red flags
Annie Graham delivers a eulogy for her mother Ellen in which she admits, in front of everyone, that they were not close. Ellen was secretive. She had private rituals and private friends. Those friends were a cult. The movie tells you this in the first ten minutes and trusts you not to notice. Annie copes by building miniature replicas of her own worst memories, which her family treats as normal. Her daughter Charlie, thirteen, clicks her tongue, makes figurines out of things she finds, and was grandma's clear favorite. Grandma had wished Charlie were a boy. Hold that thought for two acts.
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The scene everyone warned you about
Peter, the teenage son, takes Charlie to a party. Charlie eats cake containing nuts. She is severely allergic. Peter speeds toward the hospital while she leans out the window gasping for air, and the car passes a telephone pole. Charlie is decapitated. That is the scene. You now know about the single most upsetting moment in the movie, which means it can never ambush you. Peter drives home in shock, says nothing, and goes to bed. Annie finds the car in the morning. There is no jump scare in this entire sequence. The movie understands that some things are worse than jump scares.
The séance, which goes great
Annie meets Joan, a warm woman from her grief support group. Joan is from the cult. Everyone nice in this movie is from the cult. Joan teaches Annie a séance to contact Charlie, and it works, in the sense that something arrives. It is not Charlie. Annie digs through her mother's belongings and finds photo albums, a cult primer on a demon called King Paimon, and, in the attic, her mother's headless corpse. The picture assembles itself: the family has been groomed for generations to deliver Peter's body to Paimon, who grants riches in exchange for a male host. Grandma's wish about Charlie suddenly reads differently. Told you to hold that thought.
The ending, explained
Steve, the father, burns to death when Annie throws Charlie's sketchbook in the fire. Annie becomes possessed, floats to the ceiling, and saws her own head off with piano wire. Peter, chased through the house by his airborne mother, jumps from a window. Something enters his body when he lands. He climbs to the treehouse, where the cult, two headless bodies, and Charlie's crowned head on a statue are waiting. Peter, now Paimon, is crowned king. Everyone bows. The movie ends mid-coronation. No member of the family survives in any meaningful sense, and the cult gets everything it wanted. This is technically a happy ending. Just not for the Grahams.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. When the credits roll, you are released. Go.
Questions people ask at 1am
You now know everything Hereditary knows. The knowledge cannot hurt you. The imagery could have. Install Scaredy Cat and keep the arrangement.
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