Maybe crazy Ellen, crazy Joan or a spell book said that Charlie had to be killed. BUT THE MOVIE NEVER SAID THAT or even implied it. The cultists didn't "curse the family" and nowhere did anyone say they had to put Charlie's spirit into Peter. It said the cultists wanted to put Paimon's spirit into a male child of Annie's-- which turned out to be Peter. Why are you stuffing Charlie's soul in there, too? I don't think anyone in the cult had any reason to kill Charlie. It was an accident.
Nothing is "central to the curse." Crazy people just interpret and fabricate new rules when their psycho predictions don't come true. They SCAPEGOAT or blame it on something else that can't be seen or proven ("Oh! Paimon must have wanted a boy!") What they think is happening isn't really happening, just like you!
Charlie's sketchbook was not a mystical totem. Toni Collette projected a false meaning on to it from her delusional mind. She believed that Gabriel Byrne had to destroy it in a fire ritual, but she never told us why. You'll never know what that was or what part it may have played in a spell. Maybe Annie's delusional mind thought it was the only way to cure her OWN anxiety. Maybe she wanted a ritual a blessing from the father to kill Peter without spiritual repercussions. Because she was threatening Peter, blaming him, fighting and making hate drawings of him in all the build-up before. Crossing out his eyes and shit; taking revenge on his face with angry stabs.
But you have no grounds to conclude the sketchbook was indestructible or tied to the Paimon plot in any way. Byrne simply refused to burn it because it would play into Annie's delusions. Annie's lighter fuel and her clumsiness in rage is what LOOKED like set Byrne on fire -- and I believe the book DID burn up with it. But it could have all been a hallucination or a setup: If Byrne didn't obey the book-burning ritual that Annie wanted, then she would set HIM on fire instead -- so she doused his clothing in the lighter fluid before she woke him up.
You can attribute Annie's floating, the naked cultists popping out of corners and woodlands, self-throat slitting but still surviving and U.F.O. lights to real demonic powers if you want to.
But they were all hallucinations of Peter and/or Annie. You were seeing what a diseased, schizophrenic mind sees. Mortal cultists don't wander around anyone's neighborhood naked or camp in house corners.
And "the cultists" didn't dig up Ellen's body and behead it -- Annie did. Annie was the one to "find" it and Gabriel Byrne had been contacted by the police about the grave's desecration. He accused her alone of stealing the corpse and using it for some UNSPECIFIED ritual, which Annie probably dreamed up because of the way Charlie lost her head.
The headless corpse was there, in a robe, laying prostrate at the ceremony in the treehouse in the end. Does that mean it was needed for the Paimon possession? No. Maybe Annie thought it was reborn / resurrected and the same for Charlie. Or maybe they were just idols to Annie and "the cult."
If this movie were a real demon story, like THE EXCORCIST, then they wouldn't have named it HEREDITARY. And the hauntings would happen to everyone, not just TWO BLOOD RELATIVES. Gabriel Byrne and other, sane characters never saw any floating people, heard disruptive clicks or sensed any of the supernatural stuff.
But in the EXCORCIST films, all the priests, friends, neighbors, family, doctors, soldiers and scientists either get killed by the demon or injured by its violence. They bear witness to the miracles and are physically affected.
If HEREDITARY is about a real demon, then where was the magic money promised by Paimon?
There's no "Paimon." Peter is just a crazy schizophrenic himself who is going to accept all the worship and play his new role because he's selfish and deluded, plus Annie or Joan are telling him it's true.
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