10 Biggest WTF Moments From This Year's Summer Films
2. Hereditary - Head Pains
This summer was chock-full of great directorial debuts. Bo Burnham made his with Eighth Grade, Boots Riley made his with Sorry to Bother You, and Ari Aster made his with the summer's most riveting horror film, Hereditary.
If one was to go into Hereditary with no prior knowledge other than the marketing, it would be a safe assumption that the film centers on the relationship between Toni Collette's Annie and Milly Shapiro's Charlie. The trailers featured Charlie heavily and the poster even pretty obviously spells this out, featuring Annie and Charlie literally standing behind a 'family tree'.
This misdirection is exactly what makes one of the movie's greatest WTF moments so effective.
A mere twenty minutes into the film, Charlie's older brother Peter takes her out to a party with him. At this party, Peter leaves the incredibly-allergic-to-nuts Charlie, to go smoke pot with a girl he has a crush on. He tells Charlie to eat some cake while he's gone to keep her happy. Unbeknownst to them, the cake has nuts in it.
Peter discovers Charlie choking up from the reaction and gets her in the car, rushing home. In the process, Charlie roles down a window to stick her head out of it for fresh air. As she does this, the car passes by a post and the post knocks Charlie's head clean off. If that weren't enough, Aster then leaves the audience with Peter to simply marinate in the tragedy and its ramifications for a full two minutes of screentime.
It's a moment that is utterly devastating to audiences and to the characters precisely because of how WTF it is.