Annie Graham Is A Good Mother In Ari Aster’s HEREDITARY
Annie Graham (Toni Collette) is a good mother. In Ari Aster’s sensational, spellbinding, almost criminally scary debut Hereditary, matriarch Annie Graham is ostensibly anything but. A living, breathing testament to the generational linkage of trauma and illness, the Graham family haunting is best exemplified by her slow unraveling.
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She screams in Oscar-caliber fashion, berates her living son Peter (Alex Wolff) as though it’s congenital to her being, and is no less a terrifying specter in that house than the ghost of deceased daughter, Charlie (Milly Shapiro). Annie Graham, at first glance, is not a good mother, but a bad one.
Lupita Nyong’o in US is a good mother, fighting tooth and nail for her children against the intimidating odds of a Hands-Across-America-Siege. Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist is a good mother. She endeavors to free her daughter from the demonic grip of primordial being Pazuzu with more warmth and compassion than most mothers could assemble in an entire lifetime.
And JoBeth Williams, before her stint as President Emeritus of the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, was perhaps the premier good mother in Poltergeist, so much so that it feels wrong to simply call her a good mother. Instead, she is the Good Mother ™. When daughter Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) is snatched by ghouls and dragged into another dimension, Williams is there, ready to smoke a joint, tie a rope around her waist, and dive into the realm of the dead to bring back her daughter to the world of the living. A Good Mother ™, now and forever.
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Annie Graham doesn’t smoke weed. She’s cruel and callous, detached from her children and the minutiae of their daily lives, even before the waves of grief crash down and stubbornly, almost sentiently, refuse to recede. She interrogates son Peter when he asks to leave after dinner. These early scenes are sufficiently suffused with tension, permeating future dialogues and interpersonal orientations. She never smiles or leaves room for him to grow, to explore himself and his own wants and needs. Daughter Charlie sleeps with a space heater in the treehouse. Annie never wanted to be Peter’s mother, a fact made quite explicit when, after a bout of sleepwalking, she verbatim announces it at the foot of his bed.
It’s a great deal to dissect and debate, and the visceral pain inflicted by Annie is more haunting than the literal demons occupying their home. Several years before the start of the film, Annie tried to set Peter on fire while he slept. She said it was the sleepwalking. He wasn’t quite as convinced. The relationship had been strained since, and even with daughter Charlie, that affection seems less maternal instinct and more spite-driven on account of Annie’s own mother, Leigh, a looming presence even after her death. She insisted on feeding and coddling Charlie, and Annie’s desire to be a good mother with her is competitive– she can, and will, do it better than her own.
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A good mother, at its core, is perhaps any mother who tries their best. And on the surface, Annie Graham is not a good mother. In a league with Nyong’o, Burstyn, and Williams, she doesn’t even rank. Yet, it is my contention– and likely Aster’s himself– that Collette’s Annie Graham isn’t just a good mother. But perhaps the Good Mother ™, motivated by an incalculable maternal instinct. A Delphic desire to preserve and protect her children, no matter the cost.
Clouded by inherited illness and grief, Annie isn’t ever fully aware of what drives her to do the things she does. Weeks of meltdowns in a community support group yield no clarity. Annie is confused, hurt, and angry. And though she never quite vocalizes it, wants nothing more than for her children to die. She wants them dead, though, for their own good– that is her perspicacity. Somewhere buried deep within she knows the cruel fate that awaits her children on account of her own mother. She knows about Paimon and the cult’s longstanding yearning to find him a living host.
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First it was Annie’s own brother who died by suicide after accusing Grandma Leigh of trying to “put people in him.” Annie then sequestered herself from her family, keeping Peter far away from Leigh and her mother’s friends. Insidiously, Leigh slithered back in, an infernal snake from Hell, and attached herself to Charlie. When Peter was ostensibly safe, Annie– not a neglectful mother, but a pragmatic one– shifted her focus to Charlie. Endeavoring against the quite literal forces of Hell to keep her daughter free from wicked influences. Every scathing remark and cruel showdown– all more terrifying and gasp-inducing than the beheadings and immolations of the third act– is loaded with subtext.
It’s not the subtext of a bad mother, though. It both is and is not the subtext, as Ari Aster might aver, that family is just as frightening as the supernatural. It is, though it is only so thoroughly, hellishly frightening here on account of Grandma Leigh. Annie, in stark contrast, is the good mother. She is the best of what family is and can be.
An undying, enduringly firm desire to protect one’s own creation. She is as much a part of her children as they are of her. And even if it means eternal damnation, Annie Graham will burn forever to protect her children. That’s not a bad mother, but a good one. A Good Mother ™ in a storied tradition of good genre mothers. The tagline for Hereditary reads, Every family tree hides a secret. And this family’s secret– the Graham family secret– is that Annie loves her children, more than anyone realizes.
Do you think Annie Graham is a good mother In Ari Aster’s Hereditary? What did you think of Hereditary in general? Let us know below!
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