10 Movies You Didn't Realise You Were Following The Villain

8. Hereditary

Ari Aster's horror masterpiece Hereditary doesn't start dropping the clear truth bombs until its very final moments.

At the end of the film, it's confirmed that practically everything the Graham family has been put through over the course of the movie has been part of a plan to place the demon Paimon within the body of the Graham's son Peter (Alex Wolff).

But writer-director Aster has also since confirmed that Peter's eccentric sister Charlie (Milly Shapiro), who is brutally killed in an "accident" at the end of the first act, was actually the original host to Paimon prior to her demise.

It's implied that Peter's dead grandmother Ellen (Kathleen Chalfant) was a major figure in the demonic cult, and given that she was said to have been extremely attached to Charlie as a baby, it makes sense that she actually placed Paimon within Charlie, a temporary host, when she was born.

This also explains Charlie's generally bizarre behaviour, such as her signature glottal stop and withdrawn demeanour, because while it might at first merely suggest a typical misfit teenager, it's actually because Charlie doesn't really exist at all - she's just a vessel containing Paimon as he waits for his male host.

And so, the cult's plan involved killing Charlie in order to free Paimon, before using a traumatised Peter as the new vessel. While the audience was blissfully unaware for most of the movie, Paimon was in fact with them all along.