The horrifying subject matter of Hereditary might be enough to scare away a young performer, but for 16-year-old star Milly Shapiro, the film’s more gruesome elements were one of the project’s selling points. In fact, were she to be able to take home any prop from the project, it would be arguably one of the film’s most disturbing pieces of gore.
Videos by ComicBook.com
WARNING: Spoilers below for Hereditary
Of the film’s many horrifying sequences, a decapitated and decomposing recreation of Shapiro’s head was required, which she still hopes someone involved in the project will gift to the young star.
“I really, really want it. I’m not really sure who ended up with it, but if they want to give it to me, it would be a good Halloween present, Christmas present, birthday present,” Shapiro shared with ComicBook.com. “I keep trying to casually mention it. Trying to convince my mom that if we do get it, to let us use it as a centerpiece on the table. I think that would be really funny.”
Shapiro was often accompanied by her mother on set, which required her to witness a number of traumatizing events occur to her real-life daughter. It ended up being the star’s passion for the project that calmed her mother’s nerves when seeing some disturbing scenes be filmed.
“She was nervous, for sure,” Shapiro admitted. “She was there with me when I was filming, so she got to see everything and how it worked. She saw how excited I was about seeing my own decapitated head. I think that probably calmed her down.”
Luckily, as far as the horror genre is concerned, Shapiro didn’t actually have to undergo too intense of an application when it came to conveying harm coming to her character.
“We did have allergic reaction makeup, so there’s some prosthetics for that,” Shapiro detailed. “Then for the head itself, they did a mold of my head earlier, and some artist wonderfully recreated my head, which I thought was really cool. The way that it was all put together makes it seem so fluid and real, but it was really amazing.”
When Ellen, the matriarch of the Graham family, passes away, her daughter’s family begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry. The more they discover, the more they find themselves trying to outrun the sinister fate they seem to have inherited. Making his feature debut, writer-director Ari Aster unleashes a nightmare vision of a domestic breakdown that exhibits the craft and precision of a nascent auteur, transforming a familial tragedy into something ominous and deeply disquieting, and pushing the horror movie into chilling new terrain with its shattering portrait of heritage gone to hell.
Hereditary is out now on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD.
How would you feel about having your own prosthetic of your decapitated head? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!
