Hi, this is Mark Kermode. Thanks downloading this Kermode on film podcast. Or if you're watching on YouTube, thanks for watching. Hello. Joined as usual by Jack Howard. Jack, what's the subject on the table today? We're going to be discussing the idea of do you change or does the film change? Now, spoilers, the film doesn't change. Well, unless somebody goes back to films with it. Let's assume For the purposes of this argument, the film doesn't change.

So we're going to be talking about how your opinion can shift over time and why it does.

And Mark and I will be discussing our own experiences with that concept.

Very good.

So I recently rewatched hereditary.

Her head hit a tree. Her head hit a tree. Do you think that was intentional? No, I know it wasn't because I told Ariaster that joke and he hadn't heard it. No, he hadn't heard it. And he had the good grace to laugh because I said, you do know the pun about hereditary and he went, no. And I went, you know, her head hit a tree and he went, oh yeah. It's a post, so it doesn't quite work. Well, a post is made of wood and wood is a tree. Yeah, I suppose if you kind of unpack it enough. Yeah, okay, you can hear it. I still think it's, I'm sorry. I think it's a great joke. But it was also very good to be able to actually say it to Harry Esther. For him to have not heard it, that's amazing.

Anyway, so you recently watched her head hit a tree.

Yeah, I re-watched it because on a previous version of this podcast, we've discussed it.

And I remember the first time I watched Hereditary, her head hit a tree, and I had my jacket up to my eyes because I was so uncomfortable. I thought it did such a great job at going, oh, we're doing a horror film, but it's just horrible things happening to this family. And then halfway through it went, ooh, ghosts. And I could just feel the jacket getting lower and lower and lower. Well, that was my experience of it that I thought at the beginning, because I'd heard

a lot of things about it.

I thought the beginning, oh, this is good, it's creepy, he's got good atmosphere. And then halfway through, it was like the dormat. And it's like, what? Yeah. Sorry, you know. And then it, and it seemed to, it seemed to turn into a different film. Now, now knowing what I know about what Ariaster did subsequently, there is part of me that,

I mean, I remember really, really clearly that one of the things that slightly got my goat

about hereditary was I had been told by so many people.

It was hyped up, wasn't it?

It was the new exorcist.

Yeah.

Literally people were saying, not since the exorcist.

Never used that phrase with me.

It's never going to end well.

But I did, you know, I thought it had something for the first half and then and then nothing for the second half and increasingly.

So you're now going to tell me that you went back and revisited it and...

I, look, what's happened is that subsequently in the last few years we've had long legs

...