Warning: Spoilers for Hereditary
Ari Aster’s debut feature filmHereditarygave the entire horror genre a shot in the arm when it was released in 2018. The movie uses an idyllic mountain setting as the backdrop for gruesome tragedy and demonic forces, which tear Toni Colette’s Graham family apart. For all of its external scenes,Hereditaryfeatures real locations in a specific area around Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, that help to ground its premise in everyday family life.
It’s the presence of everyday locations in the movie which makes the grisly fate which awaits the Grahams all the more horrifying. From the high school of Graham children Peter and Charlie to the nondescript funeral home where the mother of Colette’s character Annie is buried,nowhere inHereditaryfeels particularly unusual. That is, until a dead mountain deer becomes the indirect cause ofCharlie’s brutal death by decapitation, the first of several scenes throughout the film in which a character’s head is detached from their body.
The Graham Family Home Is A Real House Outside Salt Lake City
It Was Used For All Exterior Shots Of The Graham House
The principal location ofHereditaryis the woodland home of the Grahams, which seems like an innocent enough place to begin with. During the course of the story, however,it turns into the setting for demonic seances and gut-churning body horror. Ari Aster has explained that the sets for the interior scenes where most of this horror took place were built from scratch on a soundstage, as was the exterior of Charlie’s treehouse (viaMovieMaker). According to the movie’s miniatures supervisor, Steve Newburn, this stage was located in Toronto (viaStan Winston School of Character Arts).
Hereditary Cast & Character Guide: Who Else Stars In The Toni Collette Horror Movie
Ari Aster’s Hereditary is a psychological horror story following the Graham family, and it has a cast full of amazing and well-known talents.
On the other hand, the exterior ofthe Graham house itself is a real place, located in the area where the entirety ofHereditaryis set. It’s a large wooden house near Park City, a small community on the other side of the Wasatch Mountains from Salt Lake City, Utah, which is popular with skiers in the winter. The house on White Pine Canyon Road, adjacent to the Timberline cable car that goes to the top of nearby ski slopes. Meanwhile, the house ofJoan, a friend of Annie’s mother in the moviewho turns out to be part of a coven worshipingHereditary’s demon king Paimon, is in a real residential building in Salt Lake City itself.
An Actual Funeral Home And School Were Used For Scenes In The Movie
They Were Other Locations Around Salt Lake City
Residential buildings weren’t the only real locations used forHereditary. The funerals of Annie’s mother Ellen, the secretive leader of aRosemary’s Baby-style demonic cult, and daughter Charlie take place at an actual funeral home called Larkin Sunset Gardens. The home is located in a suburb to the southeast of Salt Lake City called Sandy, andoffers spectacular views of the Wasatch Mountainsas we see in the movie. It’s also a realistic choice for Ellen and Charlie’s burials, with Larkin Sunset Gardens little more than half an hour’s drive from the location of the Graham house.
Likewise,Hereditary’sschool scenes were shot in a real high school in Salt Lake City. West High School in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of the city was used for all interior classroom and corridor scenes, including theterrifying moment Peter prefigures his possession and deathby smacking his own head against his school desk. But for the exterior shots of the building itself, the Grand Building of Utah State Fairpark was repurposed to serve as a high school campus.
Where Hereditary Is Supposed To Be Set
The Answer Makes The Movie Even More Terrifying
Although Salt Lake City and its surrounding area were used consistently for all ofHereditary’s exterior and on-location interior settings,the movie never actually specifies where it is set. This lack of specificity is an unusual choice for a horror movie of its type, especially in light of how much the atmospheric landscapes of the Wasatch Mountains appear to haveinspired Aster in particular scenes ofHereditary. His decision not to mention Salt Lake City or Utah in the script was likely deliberate, in an effort to give the events of the story a more universal character.
If the audience doesn’t know whereHereditaryis set, what happens to the Grahams could have happened anywhere, to anyone, which makes the film even more terrifying. If, on the other hand, location names were mentioned at any point, the wilderness of Park City or the grand backdrop of the Wasatch peaks could be misconstrued as factors in the plot. Aster would rather we simply enjoy the view, than assume it has anything to do with the horrors that befall the Grahams.
Hereditary
Cast
The feature film debut of writer-director Ari Aster, Hereditary tells the story of the unwittingly cursed Graham family. Annie Graham (Toni Collette) lives with her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) and their children Peter (Alex Wolff) and Charlie (Milly Shapiro). After the death of Annie’s mother, the family is beset by disaster and stalked by a supernatural entity that dredges up a past that Annie had spent her life trying to overlook.
