jacob_b

So the group just happened to know Charlie was going to stick her head out the window to get it taken off? Unless Charlie was possessed and that was her way of dying? How can something like that be that planned out on knowing that Charlie would stick her head out to get it taken off???

DaveyJoe

Charlie was possessed from a young age by Paimon, yes. The clicking sound and general weird behavior was all Paimon. Paimon liked decapitations and Charlie cut off the bird's head. Early in the film Toni Collette mentions that her mother got her hooks in Charlie. The point of killing Charlie was so that Paimon could switch host bodies to a male.

Undeadcow

The slowburn quality of the firm is great and it's an especially emotional film where much of the horror is more about the turmoil in the family that anything readily supernatural, even the ending while more clearly supernatural would be easy to interpret thematically. Seems like the kind of film that would benefit from multiple viewings.

The soundtrack was very effective.

I though Gabriel Byrne was uncharacteristically poor in the film, his character mostly comes across like a jerk without much range and often taking the most base knee jerk reactions.

One thing that didn't gel with me, other than for shock, is the unearthed body of the grandmother decapitated - that seems excessive and without purpose. If it's a witchcraft cult it doesn't make sense why they would need to pull that off. Maybe that just helps keep the theme of family/inheritance in play.
With Charlie dismembering the bird then herself being dismembered, it's obvious there was some connection and that wasn't coincidence so took a little away from the well acted grief aspects. However, Hereditary never really explains it's zest for decapitation adding an eerie level of morbid repetition (if we do subscribe into the mental health exploitation then maybe this shows mind-body disconnect). I like to think that the bird suggests Charlie (or Paimon acting through Charlie) was an actor in her own death beyond accident (which ties into themes of agency later in the movie, Charlie or something from beyond killed Charlie not any of the grieving humans).

I have read that the idea is that Paimon possessed Charlie, and that makes sense - but is there anything other than vague hints that Charlie was Paimon's vessel? Isn't it also possible that Paimon possessed the Grandmother and that Charlie was mostly a normal-ish girl? The reason I wonder about this is because the grandmother was obviously long affiliated with the cult and at a revered status, to think that Paimon became involved recently with only the youngest family member seems discredited by the obvious legacy here.

I feel like Charlie's sketchbook is important in that it causes people to burn when it is burned, not sure if that's just surface level death stuff. Maybe that's to say that grief about un-natural death immolate people who tries to cast it off too early, seems significant but not sure why. I felt like the sketchbook was one hint that Charlie was ultimately in control of what happened throughout the movie (even if Paimon was in play earlier than her).
The dollhouse adds a nice meta-touch of implying there is something manipulating the characters like dolls, but again never really established other than a hint at it.

The early scene of the teacher lecturing about if intentional actions leading to punishment are more tragic than if the actions are unintentional and felt like that provided a big clue that there was more at play than the agency of the characters. Late the idea that punishment brings wisdom is introduced. I'm not sure I entirely follow the themes. My interpretation was not that the characters lacked agency due to mental illness or mundane health genetics but because of some supernatural interference. Aside from offering mental illness as a plausible reason for some of the death I'm not sure I ever bought into it much. I work in mental health and Hereditary was not a demonstration of credible mental health symptoms, it's pure fantasy. Mental health in most films is the worst kind of low hanging fruit pushing stigma rather than any sort of empathy and often horrible misrepresenting everything. It's very rare that psychosis is expressed as belief in the supernatural, other than hyper-religious ideas. If the intent of these film makers was to suggest the extremes of mental illness then that's tacky and a dis-service to both mentally ill people and an otherwise fascinating film. Also the scenes with Joan having Peter's picture of a ritual table suggests that supernatural forces, more than psychiatry, is at play because there is no way that's from Peter's perspective. It's also possible that rather than textbook mental health the film was intended to thematically depict the ravages of grief in an otherworldly way that was much more metaphoric than anything literal.