Metrograph

Annie Graham (Toni Collette) has just buried her mother, but this is only the beginning of the travails that will face the Grahams—Annie’s husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), their 16-year-old son Peter (Alex Wolff), and their 13-year-old daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro)—in Aster’s occult horror/family tragedy, which begins its litany of punishments with an accident involving a slice of chocolate cake, a moving car, and a telephone pole, and scarcely lets up from there. The Graham home, a character in the film in its own right—as well as the adjacent treehouse where Hereditary has its nauseating climax and the meticulous dollhouse miniatures that sculptor Annie creates—were all purpose-built by production designer Grace Yun and her team, giving this film about congenital curses the hermetic quality of a closed system in which its characters are unknowingly and inescapably trapped.

Distributor: A24

Introduction by production designer Grace Yun on Saturday, October 18th