This weekend it is the quintessential, exclusively Utah holiday...Pioneer Day where we celebrate Utah's birthday. The day that Brigham Young led his followers, a bunch of tough and rugged pioneers who had been persecuted for their beliefs to a swampy desert lake of salt and alkali and said "This is the place," and thus Salt Lake City was founded and the Utah territory, then known as Deseret, was to be the new home for the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on July 24, 1847. Usually the holiday is celebrated by a picnic or outdoor BBQ where burgers, funeral potatoes and Jell-O salads of all sorts are served. Some go on a hike to see the natural wonders of Utah's beauty or perhaps light a few fireworks left over from the 4th of July. The dedicated few will engage in a handcart trail and spend a day walking 25 miles with old fashioned pioneer handcarts, buggies and such to live a day in the worn out shoes of the pioneers who settled the Beehive State. We will celebrate it by watching eerie horror movies that were actually filmed in Utah. The first will be 1962's unsettling low budget cult classic "Carnival of Souls" and we will follow that with one of the most devastating horror movies of all time 2018's "Hereditary." Let's get into it shall we?
As I sit here looking at a computer screen wondering how I should tackle these two very bizarre films, I realize that both of them are hard to pinpoint, without offering up major spoilers. I shall do my very best not to reveal too much of the plot from these movies, though I know a few of us saw "Carnival of Souls" last summer, there still may be spoilers ahead for some of you. My humblest apologies.
"Carnival of Souls" centers around Mary Henry, played by Candace Hilligoss, in one of her only roles. Mary is a fairly introverted individual who isolates herself, especially from men and yet has a desperate loneliness that she can't quite figure out how to fill. She plays the organ as a living and soon after surviving a near fatal car accident that killed two of her friends she moves from Kansas to Salt Lake City to play for what is presumably an Episcopalian (The Minister played by Art Ellison has a collar but he is not referred to as a priest but rather a minister) congregation. The minister informs her (jokingly as those that realize she's in Utah understand that even though Salt Lake is an urban area it's main population at the time was still LDS (Mormon)) "We're obviously not the largest church in the area but we have a nice congregation." When the Minister tries to organize a welcome for Mary she asks that they skip that whole thing. The Minister warns that a woman "cannot live in isolation from the human race, you know." Still her wishes are reluctantly followed.
Mary moves into a room in town and her neighbor across the hall is a piece of tentacled slime known as John Linden, played with greasy obnoxiousness by Sidney Berger. He is a man who poo-poos education because it's a waste of time (or rather he wasn't so good at it) but boasts he is making good money at a local warehouse (even though he's living in a single boarding room). This man has all the red flags. He's an alcoholic, pouring whiskey into his coffee mug in the morning and chugging beers at the local dance hall at nights and suggests Mary do the same. He's a peeping tom, always trying to catch a look at Mary in her towel or changing into her bathrobe. He has one intention and one intention only with Mary and is at times aggressive, pushy, or sometimes stooping so low as to try to guilt and coerce Mary into some physical hanky-panky, "You don't like to dance. You don't like to drink. You don't like for a man to hold you close that's it isn't it?" Of course this movie was filmed while the Hay's Code was still intact so there is no nudity here, just implications.
Pretty much everyone in the film talks to Mary in a demeaning manner. Women shake their head at her and cluck-cluck questioning why she doesn't just conform. Men either think she's hysterical or frigid. All she wants to do is play the organ and even the minister fires her for the blasphemous tune she was playing while she was having one of her delusional hallucinations. Oh haven't I mentioned those yet? Yes she's been having them since the car crash.
Ever since her accident Mary has been having visions of a ghoul (played by Herk Harvey who also directed the film) who looks pretty much like a normal man in a business suit, except his hair looks like thin strands of loosely hung thread, his skin is a pale white, and the circles around his eyes are heavily pronounced and dark.
Indeed Dr. Samuels an armchair psycho-analyst played by Stan Levitt thinks the explanation is simple, survivors guilt, Though he too is taken aback that Mary has never been with a man, at the age of 34, indicating as everyone else does that something is fundamentally wrong with Mary. She's damaged in some way probably from something long ago even before the accident.
Eventually for no other reason than she's drawn to it Mary makes her way to the abandoned Saltair Pavilion in Salt Lake City, which is where the big climax of the film takes place.
Some strange aspects about the movie concern the post dubbing in some of the scenes where extras were involved. It's very obvious dubbing, and it shouldn't work and yet it does. It adds to the dreamlike nightmare quality of the black and white film.
One strong aspect of the movie is the score by Gene Moore a Kansas City organist and composer. This adds such doom and gloom to the movie that it could be seen as quite silly, and yet it isn't because everyone is playing everything completely straight.
So is the strange ghoul from the after life? Is Mary just another hysterical woman circa 1962? Is Mary dead? Is this all a dream? Who knows? And though virtually no one saw it when it was released it has since become quite a popular cult classic and one of those movies that's shown at colleges, film festivals, midnight movie double features, and late night broadcasts around the country as it's in the public domain due to no one involved with the movie knowing how to copyright the prints at the time.
So how and why did this little gem get made?
It all comes down to a man named Heck Harvey. Harvey was a director and producer of industrial and educational films with a little production company called Centron Corporation who directed and produced films for such companies as: General Motors, McGraw-Hill, Encyclopedia Britannica Films, Iowa Beef Industry Council and the Kansas Board of health to name a few.
After returning to Kansas after a shooting in California Harvey got an idea for "Carnival of Souls" after driving passed the then abandoned Saltair Pavilion in Salt Lake City. When he arrived back in Lawrence he called his buddy, who also worked for Centron Films as a writer to pen the script a man by the name of John Clifford. Harvey told him he wanted "...a whole bunch of ghouls dancing in a ballroom, but the rest was up to him. He wrote [the script] in three weeks."
After that Harvey went to work finding a lead and he came across Candace Hilligoss. Candace was on her way to being a serious actress at that point having just finished her training with famous acting coach Lee Strasberg. She was paid approximately 2,000 dollars for her work in the film.
The film was shot in three weeks in both Lawrence Kansas and Salt Lake City locations. The initial budget for the film was $30,000. Harvey managed to raise $17,000 by asking local businessmen to invest $500 dollars a piece for his film. The other $13,000 was personal money he and his co-writer had saved over the years. Much of the film was shot guerrilla style, paying off locals, to shoot quickly in each location and with the exception of the pavilion he did not get the proper permission forms to shoot at any of the locations. Harvey hired an assistant director Reza Badiyi, who had just finished working with Robert Altman on his film "The Delinquents." The two of them used all the tricks in the book to limit the cost on the film, Harvey using tricks he knew from the educational film world, and Badiyi from working with Altman, another frugal director. In the film's only stunt where where a car falls of a bridge and into a river, as Harvey was a local, he was able to shoot in Lecompton, Kansas for free assuming that he paid for the damage to the rails once production was completed. This was a $12 dollar cost item.
"Carnival of Souls" was a lost film floating about to different Drive-ins or colleges showing it during the Halloween season due to the lack of rights, it wouldn't be until 1989 where critics and audiences started taking notice of it. It is often a film shown in film classes on how to effectively use light and sound on a budget. It does suffer from overacting but there is an eerie expressionistic feel to the film that cannot be denied.
Now that it's been released on DVD and Blue-ray and it's been restored digitally, "Carnival of Souls" has been a mainstay for the Halloween season for the last thirty years, and hopefully will be for years to come.
Candace Hilligoss would star in one more horror film "The Curse of the Living Corpse" in 1964. She would then marry soap star Nicolas Coster whom she would have two children with and then divorce in 1981. She essentially retired to raise her two children, and occasionally does the odd horror convention. She published her memoir "The Odyssey and the Idiocy -- Marriage to an Actor" in 2017. She is 86 years old and still quite active.
Art Ellison -- would continue his career with the Kansas City Power and Light Company for 48 years. Even thought he was not a professional actor when he was young he was very active in the local Kansas community theater scene. He would eventually get into industrial and educational films and do that for the twilight years of his life as he holds the record for being in more educational films than any other actor in the United States. His biggest role would be in 1973 playing the Silver Mine Gentleman in the movie "Paper Moon." he would pass away in 1994 at the age of 95 due to natural causes.
Sidney Berger would find a home in education. He was the director of the University of Houston's School of Theatre & Dance from 1969-2007 and worked closely with another famous theater artist turned educator Edward Albee famous author of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" There he would teach such famous actors as Robert Wuhl, Brent Spiner, Dennis Quaid and Randy Quaid. He would found the Houston Shakespeare Festival in 1975 and continue involvement in that until 2010. From 1980-2008 he would also participate as a director and administrator for the local Children's Theatre Festival. A crowning achievement there was convincing composer Jerry Bock (Fiddler on the Roof) to create new musicals for the yearly summer festival. The last play he would direct would be "At Home At the Zoo" by his close friend Albee. Sidney would also pen a number of theater textbooks as well. He would pass away in 2013 at the age of 78. I couldn't find what he passed away from but there are several nice obituaries, many from student's whose lives he touched. My favorite interaction comes from a colleague who joked "You know, Sidney, 'My door is always open' is just a figure of speech...." Sidney's reply was a hearty laugh. And the colleague never did find the door locked.
Stan Levitt would get a part of an insurance salesman in the true crime thriller "In Cold Blood" in 1967. He and his wife opened a greeting card company and participated in both community and regional repertory theater over the years. Eventually he and his wife would sell their company only to own several other businesses in his lifetime which included: printing, publishing, advertising, including some work with Ronald Regan. Stan would go back to school in his later years and study financial management at the Baruch School of Commerce and become a registered investment advisor due to his experience in entrepreneurship. He would then become a financial advisor to people from all around the world and actually published two books on the subject. He would serve as Kansas State Chairman of the Pearl Harbor Survivors and was active serving other veterans for the remainder of his life. He died in 2004 of natural causes at the age of 87.
John Clifford would continue writing for Centron Films. He would spend the rest of his live in Lawrence Kansas where he would pass away from a heart attack at the age of 91 in 2010.
Gene Moore would continue playing the organ. He would release an album in 1970. He would publish a memoir in 1990. In 1998 he would die of natural causes. He was 88 years old.
Reza Badiyi would go on as a successful television director directing episodes for such shows as: Get Smart, Mission: Impossible, Hawaii Five-O, The Incredible Hulk, The Six Million Dollar Man, Starsky and Hutch, The Rockford Files, The Doris Day Show, Police Squad!, Cagney and Lacey, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, La Femme Nikita, Sliders and Baywatch. In all he directed over 430 episodes from 1963 until 2006. His real claim to fame is actually creating the opening montage sequences for: Mission: Impossible, Hawaii Five-O, Get Smart, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He would die in 2010 at the age of 81 from natural causes.
Herk Harvey would never direct another movie again. He would however continue to work with Centron directing and producing various educational films. He would also star in the ABC television movie "The Day After" a realistic post-apocalyptic view of what would happen if an actual nuclear war broke out. Harvey would retire from educational film in 1985 and teach film production at the University of Kansas as well as participating in local community theater as both an actor and a director as well as starring in a few made for T.V. movies filmed in the area. He would die in 1996 of pancreatic cancer, he was 71.
I will admit that this is a dated movie with lots of silliness, especially from the performances. The movie reminds me of a community play done by amateurs who lack skills but are totally putting their heart into the production, and it does play like a very long episode of "The Twilight Zone." Either you like that kind of melodramatic cheese with twisty confusing endings and an ambiguous moral message or you don't. The stars of the movie are the camera, the lights, the sound design and the score. I still enjoy the other bits of the film and so did other great film makers such as George A. Romero and David Lynch, who both credit this work as something that influenced their own. And sometimes what is so fascinating about these old movies is the story of how they were made and I think this one is especially interesting. What's wonderful is if you can't make it to the movie or if you want to prepare your rifftrax insults ala "Mystery Science Theater 3000" style the movie is in the public domain and is posted below.
Now we get to a movie that is everything "Carnival of Souls" isn't. This is a polished piece of art, painstakingly put together in one of the most critically acclaimed horror movie debuts in history. This is 2018's horror psycho-drama "Hereditary." Again I feel like this is a movie that is hard to cover without giving too much away. I'll do my best but spoilers ahead.
"Hereditary" is elevated horror at its best. Heralded by critics, it tells the gut-wrenching story of a family coming to terms with losing a powerful, manipulative, evil grandmotherly matriarch of the family, who ruled with an iron fist, and yet as the movie moves forward it becomes very apparent that the matriarch is not entirely gone, if you get my drift.
This movie is well-acted throughout with some of independent films most heavy of hitters.
Toni Collette plays Annie Graham the mother of the family who spends her time making, sometimes inappropriately accurate portrayals of her family's life through miniatures that she plans to have shown soon at a local gallery. Collette was a recipient of many awards throughout Hereditary's run when it was in the festival circuit and deservedly so. She is amazing here and frankly should have been nominated for an Academy Award but you know, horror is just now becoming recognized as art and we wouldn't want to give the genre too many accolades now would we? She has the most nuanced performance in the film going from emotional, to shocked, to numb and we feel her emotional pain, conflict and anguish throughout the entire film.
Gabriel Byrne plays Steve Graham the father who also happens to be a psychiatrist. He spurts out blanket statements of support for his wife, but he's not willing to get down and do the emotional work with her. He does enough of that kind of work at work. No he focuses on his son whose emotions he understands and can rationalize while his wife is unstable and confusing to him.
Instability must be ignored or thrown away. It's nonsense and nothing good can come from it. Steve condemns his wife's wishes to sleep in a cold treehouse outside with the heater, where a deceased loved one used to sleep. He scoffs at her obsession with her art projects, and when Annie gets caught up in her work and forgets to cook dinner he grunts "I made dinner. Come eat. Or don't. Do whatever the fuck you want." He gets down right angry when Annie suggest they do a séance. This was a man (Annie admits this was the right thing to do in a grief meeting) that though the grandmother was still living in their house there was a no contact rule, and no one in the family was allowed to speak to her. This was logically the right choice as the grandmother was sick, frail, and old with issues regarding mental health and dementia, and that combined with being a manipulative sociopath, yes he was correct in making this choice, but he also takes this kind of a stance on pretty much every issue, and here lies the problem. He spends so much time in his logical mind that he is unwilling to give any illogical emotional support to his wife that don't follow the normal stages of grief. Well as you can tell this is not a normal functional family. The vicious arguments, that are filled with sharp terrible honesty, that these characters have with one another are frankly more horrific than anything supernatural that is thrown at us in the second half of the film.
Alex Wolff plays peter Graham, Annie and Steve's 16 year old son. He is disengaged, avoidant, smoking lots of pot and becomes the center of the last third of the film, when we suddenly realize what the entire movie has been about. He becomes very nearly catatonically depressed when a second tragedy, that I will not spill here, happens to the suffering family.
Milly Shapiro is Charlie Graham, Annie and Steve's 13 year old daughter. She's just plain weird, shoving chocolate bars down her mouth, and wanting to always sleep in the cold, or be in the cold, whether it's in the treehouse, in the freezing attic, or refusing to put on shoes and a coat to go outside for a hike. Though there's no snow anywhere, anyone who has been in the area recognizes this as the mountains of northern Utah. The family lives in a cabin in the woods (cue horror trope here) in the mountains, surrounded by quaking aspen (though it's still close enough to town to commute to the local public school). The nights and mornings are cold there even in summer months. There is some resentment of Milly as she was the only member of the family who was actually close to the grandmother.
This is a difficult movie to watch. In fact it is the most difficult movie for me to watch that we've had here at Spooky Suppers. When I was making my top ten list for best horror films of the 2010s I considered this movie but ended up putting it in my runner up list, not for lack of craft because this is a damn near perfectly crafted film, but because it's just not rewatchable. This coincides with the general opinion of the movie world-wide. This is a film loved by critics but loathed by audiences. It holds an 89% on Rottentomatoes.com but stands at a dismal D+ on CinemaScore which is just audience based. I struggle watching the film, and I'm not alone. One of our regular mutants who attends these spooky suppers has a brother that down right detests this movie and finds it extremely morally offensive.
On the one hand this is not a fun horror movie. Its visceral and tough to swallow, but I must admit I agree with the philosophical sentiments that Aster presents here, (not that they are positive but that they are happening); this is not entertainment. This is art playing it's most vital role for humanity. It's a warning.
It reminds me of several other films over the years that I thought were brilliant but I never wanted to watch again as they left me in a place and a headspace that I just don't enjoy being in. Those films off the top of my head are "The Joker" David Cronenberg's "The Fly" and "Requiem for a Dream." These films as well as "Hereditary" are amazing, artistic, perfectly made movies that the creators should be proud of, but they have ideas I want to fight against, truths that I don't wish to see, and leave me with a feeling that is empty, not sad, but beyond sad, as if I'm floundering in a thick tarry void of meaninglessness. And I truly believe that is the point of these movies. It's pure nihilism. It's the existential crisis that has no conclusion and if there is any conclusion to be found the conclusion is pointless.
"Hereditary" does this flawlessly and better than perhaps any other movie I've ever watched. The message this movie has for it's audience is a grim one and one that other pieces of media have toyed with albeit perhaps in gentler ways. It's an idea that I see at the school where I work, from colleagues, from friends, on social platforms and in our current pieces of art and storytelling. The message is this: the family unit is toxic; it will destroy us; we are better off abandoning it and being on our own else we get entrapped by the social construct of the traditional family structure that has no purpose but to control us through guilt. I sadly believe more and more this is where the majority of society's mindset is in the West.
As humans we are social creatures. We crave a tribe. It is burned within our survival DNA from caveman days. We used to need to work together in order to kill a buffalo so that we could feed our village. If someone thought differently we kicked them out of the tribe and thus ensured our survival.
As humanity began to progress forward we created the family unit. We no longer needed everyone in the village to think the same way in order to feed everyone and survive, but we still required support and love. This was supposed to be a place of safety and comfort. We were stronger with our family than without it. Our movies represented this as well. The greatest horror movie ever made is "The Exorcist." It has always boggled my mind that the extremely religious right has such a problem with this movie. Frankly if they were to watch it they would realize that "The Exorcist" is a pro-religion, pro traditional family values movie. Regan becomes possessed because her mom is busy on a filmset and fooling around with casual lovers, partying and such. Regan's mother is absolutely loving and cares about her daughter but she's making very secular choices which isolates Regan from her mother's life. This isolation, combined with a split home and a father who is not present opens Regan up to possession. Then of course the Catholic church comes in and through the power of Christ and self-sacrifice and blah, blah, blah, the demon is expelled, though not without consequences because as any serious Christian will tell you we are all sinners.
The point is that the family, if it were in tact would have kept Regan safe from possession. If that movie were made today it might very well be the two women fleeing from the evil Satan worshipping father wishing to implant Regan with a demon from Hell. Or it might be Regan having to stand up to the demon on her own as the patriarchal construct of organized religion has failed her and she must defeat the demon one her own because feminism.
We are living in a different world today where our special education teachers shake their heads at parents who are neglectful and think truly that the State can raise the kids better. That doesn't mean that the State shouldn't get involved regarding cases of abuse. Foster parenting used to be a last resort and we used to feel bad for kids who had to go their because their parents were such useless human beings, now the culture is changing where maybe that is a better place than at home where mom and dad made a mistake (yes some mistakes are bigger than others) but there's very little leeway for parents right now and so many of them have turned their minds off to their children anyways focusing on their careers, hobbies or relationships outside of the home. If they do nothing then they can't make any mistakes right? We wonder why parents allow their kids to be rotten little scoundrels thrashing about in public places like a movie theater or a grocery store with no kind of punishment. We see parents apologize, frustrated to tears, or apathetically numb to their young one who is having a tantrum as if the tantrum is their fault and not the result of a child testing boundaries. Kids can so easily be taken away these days and children know subconsciously that they don't have to get their needs met by Mom and Dad. There are other resources: school, government and non-profit programs. A kid today doesn't really need their parents, at least not how they did even 30 years ago. Society as a whole has said to hell with parenting and thus the State has stepped in to fill that role, and the majority (at least if you believe where our storytelling and social media platforms are at) agrees that this is acceptable.
But we still need a tribe. We are social creatures after all. So where do we turn? Identity politics. I'm republican. I'm democrat. I'm libertarian. I'm woke. I'm socialist. I'm an incel. I'm a social justice warrior. We are giving strength to these very very divisive tribes and losing any form of individuality that the family unit or the tribe gave us. Sure in these former institutions there were rules we had to follow, but we still had individual thoughts and opinions. In a family a husband and a wife could vote for a different person come election time. Children could choose which hobbies they engaged in and which careers to pursue. An agnostic child could still be loved by a religious parent and so forth. In these cultish identity politics groups we don't have the luxury of individuality. These new constructs are cults that demand we think exactly like everyone in the group. And if we don't we don't deserve to be a part of society. We should lose our jobs, our friends, our social network and just vanish. It would be better if we died but identity political groups still need a Hester Prynne with a Scarlet A to present to the rest of the group if they step out of line. If something doesn't come along that's better than what we are doing now this is truly the breakdown of yes the family unit, but also society. "Hereditary" tells us that the family unit is dangerous and we must abandon it but gives us nothing to replace it with, which leaves the audience in a void of despair.
So Steve was correct in isolating the cancer that was the grandmother out of his family's lives. But now that she's gone the best thing for the family to do would have been to go their separate ways. Literally everything at this point is better than staying with the family. In a kinder movie these people would be broken yes, but they would find redemption at the end of the film through love and togetherness. They are just going through a tough time and all families have their ups and downs and they must be strong and supportive to persevere. Even though hurtful things are said, the parents aren't beating or sexually assaulting the children, and the children aren't being total delinquents; they just have problems. A movie 20 years ago these people would have come together to fight the evil that threatened to break them apart. Today the movie tells us they must abandon one another if they are to survive.
If they had not mourned the second tragedy in the film the rest of the family would have been fine. Had the men even for a minute supported Annie, they would have been fine. Annie says in a grief meeting that her family has been through so much concerning her mother that she doesn't want them to take care of her too. And she's right to think this. The men in the household don't want to give her support. In fact they are bothered that she needs it. Annie is not misguided by self-blaming guilt. The men in that house do not want to deal with the emotions of a female. Plain and simple. There are no apologies for bad behavior, just accusations. It is a shit show for the first hour of the film that reminds me more of a play drama written by Eugene O'Neil, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee, or maybe an independent psycho-drama film by John Cassavetes. There's very little horror in the first half, even if the exchanges between family members are horrific.
Watching the movie the second time before writing this review, I reflected upon the first time I watched it. I related to the son Peter the most. And more so I wanted to reach through the screen and wring the mother's neck for being so calloused and verbally abusive. This is something the film does remarkably well. Depending on our own lives and our own relationship with trauma and tragedy, especially concerning that of a deceased loved one, we will relate to a different character on screen. The most life-changing moment in my life was when my father died of cancer. I was 18. I relate to Peter.
The second time around I tried to really look at this movie with a logical lens as the first time the flood of emotional gutter trash just emptied into me and I was traumatized and in shock of what I'd just witnessed. I found the mother much more relatable, granted four years has gone by since I last saw it, and a global pandemic has rewired all of our brains, but with that more logical lens I saw two men ganging up on her a lot during the movie. No one is blameless here. There is no villain minus the dead matriarch. That is the credit I have to give to the writer/director Ari Aster for making something so challenging for the audience. Did I mention this was his first film? Amazing.
I also noticed the directing. The last half of the film, especially the last 20 minutes felt like a near "gotcha!" moment the first time around. It was a twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalon. Yet upon the second viewing there were clues all the way through the movie. I talk about how difficult the movie is to watch but the craftmanship here is truly top notch. This is not random manipulation. This is carefully planned orchestration. Aster is playing the audience like a well-conducted symphony.
So how did this movie come to get made in the first place?
Ari Aster was still a student at the American Film Institute. He wrote and directed two fairly provocative short films "The Strange Thing About the Johnsons" and "Munchausen," which were movies right up A24's alley. A24 is a production company that produces and distributes independent films, namely those that are a little different, controversial, and socially aware. They have a tendency, just like this film, to produce movies adored by critics, but lambasted by audiences. Aster pitched his idea for a family tragedy and A24 gladly accepted.
Toni Collette was cast first as Aster was a fan of her previous work and Gabriel Byrne agreed to play Steve. As Gabriel had worked with Alex Wolff on the HBO drama "In Treatment," he was the next one cast.
The final piece of the puzzle was Milly Shapiro who had just won a Tony for her role in "Matilda the Musical" as the title character. She also quickly accepted the role.
The filming took place mainly in northern Utah: Summit County, Sandy, West high School and Utah State Fairpark.
The movie would end up being A24's biggest hit up to that time, making 80 million dollars on a 10 million dollar budget. "Everything, Everywhere All at Once" surpassed it this last summer making 94 million on a 25 million dollar budget. "Hereditary" still slightly netted more money as they had a cheaper marketing campaign and a smaller budget.
Toni Collette has continued to hit it out of the park as she has her entire career, picking the right role again and again. She has starred in "Velvet Buzzsaw," "Knives Out", "I'm Thinking of Ending Things," and "Nightmare Alley," just to name a few. She is picky about what she wants to be in and only picks the highest quality projects. Some of them don't make box office dough like "Hereditary" did but they have all been critically acclaimed. Suffering from panic attacks and bulimia early in her career she is a strong warrior, fierce and ready for the next project.
Gabriel Byrne seems to be slowing down, which he deserves to do as he's 72 years old. That essentially means one or two projects a year instead of five or six. His biggest recent success has been the role of Bill Ward on the Fox series "The War of the Worlds," as well as Winning a Lifetime Achievement Award and Best Actor Award for the Irish Film and Television awards. He is a strong atheist and participates in activism that is directly related to his home country of Ireland.
Alex Wolff is still going strong in his acting career with roles in such movies as: Stella's Last Weekend, Bad Education, Jumanji: The Next Level, Pig and Old.
Milly Shapiro's career seems to have slowed down, with just a few television appearances since the release of "Hereditary." I hope this means she is working on other projects (she is now 20 years old) and not fallen into child star syndrome, especially with her Cleidocranial Dysostosis the same disease that afflicts Gaten Matarazzo who plays Dustin on "Stranger Things." The disease involves the shortening or nonexistence of the collar bones and can affect appearance in the face, teeth and forehead, though cognitive abilities are seldom impaired. Acting is about look and this disease is a mild case of dwarfism, hence why she was able to play such a convincing 13 year old at 16. This may have affected her career now that she is an adult. I hope that she is just exploring other avenues that don't make it onto the internet.
Ari Aster would follow this film up with "Midsommar" another excellent horror film. He is currently working on another horror film, this time a horror comedy titled "Disappointment Blvd." And Aster says this is supposed to be a comedy? Sounds exactly like the type of movie he would direct! Ha Ha!
Alright so this we have a rather calm long but bizarre long episode of the Twilight Zone followed by one of the most difficult movies to watch made in the last 10 years. We'll start off with the more benign of the two. We will celebrate by having Utah cuisine. Expect funeral potatoes and green Jell-O. I'll need some High West double Rye Whiskey from Park City to get through the second film. Hope to see you all there!
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