Having become a modern signature face of the genre itself, thanks to her roles in the revived slasher Scream series and the hit Netflix show Wednesday, Jenna Ortega has revealed she went up for a performance in one of the horror genre’s most acclaimed and game-changing features: ambient filmmaker Ari Aster’s ‘elevated’, supernatural psychological horror film Hereditary.
Aster’s film stars Toni Collette in a powerful performance as a mother who finds her fractured family the target of a sinister cult and paranormal incidents after her estranged mother’s death. Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, and Gabriel Byrne also appear.
The film was released nearly a decade ago and helped cement the genre’s ability to transcend the standard ‘popcorn’ fast-food-style entertainment flick, with heavy, antagonistic plot material centred around grief, emotional agony and family breakdown.
“I didn’t understand it… I was so young when it came in. But I think I auditioned for Hereditary,” Ortega told the Big Bro with Kid Cudi podcast. “Which obviously I wouldn’t have made any sense for… especially my disposition as a kid. And I didn’t know what I was looking at…. they gave us barely any sides… it was like two pages of just ominous words that, as a 12-year-old, kind of went over the head.”
“But I remember seeing it, looking at it, and thinking, ‘I feel like this is an important movie.’ And it was. Incredible movie… Yeah, it’s funny to think that I went in for that.”
Hereditary helped kick off a wave of horror filmmaking where human emotions and life’s hardships are positioned as the true horror, with conventional elements of ghosts or extraterrestrial threats as merely the backdrops.
Ortega’s horror appearances don’t necessarily fit into this mould, something she recognised in her statement: “I just didn’t make any sense for it.”
Ortega has three films due for release this year: The Gallerist with Natalie Portman; Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun opposite Amy Adams; and J.J. Abrams sci-fi film The Great Beyond, alongside Glen Powell, Emma Mackey and Samuel L. Jackson.
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