The Oscars, long an opportunity to formally recognize actors who are good at screaming and sobbing, will not honor the very excellent, throat-splitting screams and ragged sobs Toni Collette provided to last year’s Hereditary.
This, it goes without saying, is unjust. Collette, who is always great, laid it all out for Hereditary, elevating a story of familial terror with a performance that produces a level of emotional intensity more soul-wracking than any of the film’s more explicitly spooky moments.
That said, Oscars gonna Oscars and songwriter Nick Lutsko’s here to help us process Collette’s snub in the only way that makes sense: a recap of Hereditary’s plot set to the tune of Cher’s 1998 auto-tune classic, “Believe.”
Seemingly created for no other reason than to make good on the “Cher-editary” pun, the clip lovingly distills the movie into the most disconcerting music video since “Rubber Johnny.” As Cher’s bouncy drumtrack and pulsing bass encourage listeners to shake their butts, scenes from the movie—the dinner table meltdown, support group meetings, the tree house ritual—lend a menace more palpable than the 1998 pop music landscape.
Lutsko’s remixed lyrics are funny enough in the way they fit key plot points onto melody of “Believe” (“Nobody admits anything they’ve done,” warbles nicely as a chorus, it turns out), but the real star is in the clip’s editing, which gives us lovely images like Collette, crouched on the ceiling and smashing her head to the beat. Or, better yet, a clever fusion of the track’s synthetic maracas and (shiver) that head-sawing scene.
While the mashup may not completely erase memories of Collette’s snub from your memory, it at lest provides an unlikely soundtrack for any Oscars party lacking in demonic dance beat energy.
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