Both. Though the latter is part of what I mean by "wallowing."

I think that's kinda backwards, though. It makes sense if it's foreshadowing, I suppose, but if it's only purpose is to create a reason to call back to itself, I guess I don't see the point.

Pretty much any time I think about the parts of the last act that seem a little out of place or tacked on, they end up related to that part. It really sticks out, to me, from the rest of the film.

Anyway, as you said, a touch exploitative, either way. Everyone's line on what's necessary and what's gratuitous is going to be a little different. This was just well beyond mine, I suppose.

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Re: Hereditary (spoilers!)
 

That scene is without a doubt, my most memorable scene of the year.

Re: Hereditary (spoilers!)
 

Many scenes supposed to be serious felt pretty silly or cheap to me. It's a technically competent film but it's also deeply American at its core and highly derivative of Rosemary's Baby including the over-the-top silliness of some scenes. I have a hard time digesting this particular approach.

Not emotionally effective in the least either so the strong reactions from many of you seem all the more surprising to me. Watched the first 30 minutes of this with somebody who would laugh at the looks of the girl and then in the pivotal scene say "that's gotta hurt" which probably ruined the scene for me but then the aforementioned person left so I could experience the rest of the film alone and still be unamazed and unmoved.

I liked Midsommar more. Aster is a competent director but Eggers is a much more accomplished filmmaker.

Although me saying this is the most predictable thing in the world by this point, I couldn't agree more; yes, it was fairly impressive on a visual/technical level, with some strong cinematography & art direction, but Ari Aster's overall direction undermined its positive aspects by going so over-the-top with the tone of everything (especially in the second half) that even Collette's performance eventually lost its impact, and the Horror side of the film served as a round peg to the square hole of the domestic drama that was awkwardly juggled together, and like you said, the emotional effectiveness of the film was completely undermined as a result. In the end, it couldn't help but feeling like what it was, which is a series of setpieces and imagery that were conjured up first, and then attempted to be connected through the plot (which Aster admitted in an interview is how he wrote the film, which is a bad method in general, and this is no exception), and despite his auteurist pretensions, his complete lack of tonal control and reliance on genre cliches revealed him to be kind of a Horror hack in the end, IMO.