Toni lends film its terrifying power
Toni Collette wasn’t looking for darkness when Hereditary came calling. But when the darkness found her — in the form of the unnerving saga of the Grahams, an American family haunted by tragedy, mental illness, and perhaps something supernatural — the opportunity was too delicious to pass up.
“I wasn’t interested in doing anything heavy, but I picked up the script and I couldn’t stop reading it,” the Australian native explained, slipping into the same busy Westside eatery where, just over a year ago, writer-director Ari Aster convinced her to take the plunge and play a woman who begins to unlock cryptic family secrets after the death of her own estranged mother.
The result, a claustrophobic chiller features one of the most dynamic and memorable performances of Collette’s career, in what critics are calling the scariest film in years.
Collette’s Annie Graham is many things. A miniatures artist who fills her home studio with dioramas of her own life, she re-creates memories as a means of reclaiming control. A mother of two with a strained relationship with her own mum, she is overprotective of one of her children and coldly resentful of the other. And when the unthinkable strikes, she struggles to cope with a sense of powerlessness that gives way to relentless dread as Aster spins his crumbling, nightmarish narrative.
“There’s this trend especially among American family tragedies, or family dramas, where people suffer a loss, and they go through a very tumultuous time together, but ultimately it brings them together and strengthens their bonds,” explained Aster. “That’s just not always what happens. Sometimes something happens and it takes one person down in a family, and it ends up taking the family down. I wanted to make a film about that.”
Collette too admits she isn’t one to watch scary movies. “But it isn’t simply a horror film. It’s quite natural and emotionally raw and honest. For those qualities to blend in a film like this is really unusual, and I loved that.”
“A lot of this is so intensely emotional, and my job as an actor is to make it completely transparent and as honest as possible,” she shrugged.