Hereditary is full of small details that elevate the viewing experience once you catch them and make them part of the story, among them Charlie’s (Milly Shapiro) constant tongue-clicking noises. After rising to fame with short films, most notably The Strange Thing About the Johnsons, Ari Aster made his feature-length directorial debut in 2018 with Hereditary. Also written by Aster, Hereditary is a psychological horror movie that earned him a lot of praise, also becoming a box office hit and A24’s highest-grossing film at the time.
Hereditary introduces viewers to the Graham family, led by mother Annie (Toni Collette). After the death of her secretive mother, Annie struggles with her grief, and after a second major family tragedy, dark secrets linked to her mother begin to be revealed. Annie and her family soon realize they are being watched, but the reasons behind that are a lot more sinister than she could have imagined. Annie and Steve (Gabriel Byrne) have two children: Peter (Alex Wolff) and Charlie, and the latter has a tic for clicking her tongue that serves a purpose in the story.
Charlie’s Tongue Clicking Is Partially Just A Psychological Tic
She Can’t Help It
Charlie doesn’t talk much throughout Hereditary, but what she does most is the tongue-clicking. The first time Charlie does her tongue-clicking is at her grandma’s funeral, while Annie reads a eulogy. Perhaps the most memorable scene where Charlie clicks her tongue is when the beam, understood to be one of Paimon’s ways to manifest, takes her to the site where a woman, who looks like her deceased grandmother, is sitting in front of a fire. Charlie clicks her tongue and Annie immediately appears behind her to take her back into the house.
Charlie’s tongue-clicking is a tic as it’s not something she can control, and it tends to come out in situations where she feels uncomfortable or anxious. This is why she can be heard clicking her tongue at the funeral, when seeing her grandmother in the woods and while in the car with Peter on their way to the party. However, the tongue-clicking being a tic is just on the surface, as there’s something deeper and more sinister behind it.
Charlie’s Tongue Clicking Revealed Paimon’s Presence Inside Her
Charlie Was Key To Her Grandmother’s Plans
The source of Charlie’s tongue-clicking is Paimon himself. The big reveal in Hereditary is that Annie’s mother was the leader of a coven who worshiped the demon king Paimon. This enтιтy wishes to inhabit the body of a male host, but its successful host ends up being Charlie. This is why Charlie tells Annie that her grandmother wished she was a boy, and also why she asks who will look after her now that her grandmother is ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, as it’s Paimon talking, not Charlie.
Aster confirmed that Charlie is the first successful host for Paimon, and from the moment she was born, Charlie was “displaced.”
As mentioned above, Annie struggles with her grief as she doesn’t have a good relationship, and Charlie is the only one visibly upset about her grandmother’s death, which is also due to Paimon’s presence in her. Speaking to Variety in 2018, Aster confirmed that Charlie is the first successful host for Paimon, and from the moment she was born, Charlie was “displaced” and it was just Paimon. The tongue-clicking can be taken as a physical reaction Charlie had to Paimon’s presence inside of her, or even as the only way the “real” Charlie could communicate.
At the end of Hereditary, Paimon gets what he wants after a series of horrifying and tragic events. Charlie’s death is necessary for the demon to be transferred to the male host he wanted in the first place, this being Peter. Joan proclaims Charlie as Paimon and the coven is credited with correcting its body, then hailing Peter as King Paimon.
Milly Shapiro Chose A Specific Tongue Click That Would Make Viewers More Unsettled
Milly Shapiro Made Charlie Graham More Unsettling
Charlie’s tongue-clicking might seem simple, but Milly Shapiro wanted it to be unforgettable and really get to the audience at a deeper level. Speaking to Comicbook in 2018, Shapiro explained that she and Aster had meetings to get the perfect tongue-clicking sound for Charlie, and had an entire meeting devoted to that where they both made different clicking noises. The result was a clicking noise Shapiro felt could “creep people out the most” as it’s a subtle way to hint at an extra presence in those scenes.
Shapiro added that the tongue-clicking sound they went for could give paranoia to the audience, more so as there could be the question of where the sound was coming from. The way Shapiro made the tongue-clicks is actually very subtle, so the first couple of times it can feel like an extra presence in the scene. Knowing that Paimon has been in Charlie since birth and that the tongue-clicking is linked to it only makes Hereditary a lot more sinister (and rewatchable).
Sources: Variety, Comicbook.
