Humans are born to think that we are capable of developing a sense of basic autonomy and agency — the abilities to govern ourselves, free from external control or influence, and to make choices for ourselves to achieve an intended goal. From an early age, we learn that our frontal lobe will develop as we age, allowing us to eventually make independent decisions for ourselves and live life as we want.
This sounds appealing, and frankly natural, right? However, what if you were to suddenly learn that every decision you make is actually predetermined by an external force? That even when you think you’re choosing between two options out of your own free will, those options were already intentionally presented to you by some evil force, and you never really had a choice.
This is the kind of horror explored by Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” (2018), where visual gore and auditory eeriness are combined with a conceptually ghastly idea of determinism in its most extreme form. The film follows the Graham family, who, after the death of matriarch Ellen Leigh, begin to uncover that everyone in her bloodline (the mother and her two children) has inherited the evil forces of the cult to which Ellen had devoted her life to. The cult’s presence seeps into every aspect of the characters’ lives, silently dictating and deciding every event that unfolds. Even in the scene where Peter, one of the main characters, seemingly kills his sister Charlie in a car accident, the movie reveals that this tragedy was pre-orchestrated by the cult — something the symbol engraved on the very pole that causes the fatal accident communicates. Even from the opening shot, where a camera zooms into a miniature house that turns out to be their actual home, Aster tells us the family’s world is an artificial construct. They think they’re making choices, but their lives are part of someone else’s design.
There is no doubt that some of the scenes from this movie are genuinely unsettling, gory and excruciating. However, a deeper eeriness stems from the idea that our fate is predetermined, that those horrifying moments are the consequences of a destiny that is already engineered into your bloodline. It makes us distraught because it completely shatters our perception of the world which we’ve built for ourselves — on the grounds that our minds are independent and our choices truly our own.
In the end, I think we should all aim to choose what we want and choose when we can. We may never know if we live in a predetermined universe, but at least we can find meaning and satisfaction in the act of choosing itself — in believing that we have agency, even if we don’t. This is not surrendering to naivety, but rather a way of embracing the fullest version of what we believe to be our authentic selves, without fear and hesitation. It’s far better than holding back, trying to please others at the cost of your own suffering, only to one day be told that everything was predetermined anyway.
There are already so many aspects of life we cannot choose: the race and ethnicity we are born into, the socioeconomic status and wealth we inherit, the natural state of our body’s ability or disability and so on. Certainly, we don’t live in Aster’s world, but we will never fully understand the limits of our autonomy and agency. So for everything we can choose, we might as well choose whenever we can. Choose who you love, choose your friends, choose your job, choose your passions and choose boldly.
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