There is a strain of self-satisfied intellectualism to Heretic, a movie that is quite brazenly about interrogating faith and the foundations of religious beliefs more broadly. It can feel a touch pompous at times in its offensive, regardless of the validity underlining its text; and certainly a few of the lectures read like those dirtbag internet atheist screeds designed purely to get a rise out of the devout. Directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods approach the film’s subject matter as a mostly honest theological debate though, lending credence to an alternative viewpoint and criticising the fallacies in some of these arguments that take down religion. And in this case it is the smart decision not to come down firmly on either side.
Beck and Woods have claimed that the horror of this film is rooted in its ideas more than conventional horror tropes and techniques. I think the horror in this movie is effective, but that they are quite wrong in this assessment. Heretic doesn’t draw horror from its concepts and implications like a Lovecraft story -frankly its ideas aren’t radical or inventive enough to. But those concepts do make for a curious and probing context through which to present a horror story and the dimensions of a fairly unique horror villain.
Hugh Grant has a lot of fun playing this character who essentially uses the front of a typical Grant character -an awkward polite smart-ass Englishman- to mask his real sinister proclivities. He is Mr. Reed, a recluse living in a very unusual and isolated house who had agreed to a meeting with a pair of Mormon missionaries about conversion to their church. Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) arrive to talk to him, only to be stunned by his at first subtly confrontational rhetoric about their church and their faith, soon finding themselves captive in his labyrinthine home and in a deadly test of religious conviction.
For Grant, the character is not so much a departure as the genre trapping would have you believe (indeed he’s far less scary than he was as a cannibal in Cloud Atlas). But that is a real benefit to both his performance and the movie overall. Grant can more organically approach the darker shades of the character from within this pleasant if self-absorbed demeanour. He’s not your typical creep, he still has his charms, just twisted in hostile and darkly funny ways. And he maintains composure all throughout. He is a horror movie psychopath by way of a needling university professor, and at the end of the day, what could be more horrifying than being stuck in a comparative religions lecture with a professor way too up on himself?
After a bit of an awkward start, where the faux niceties between Reed and the girls, play as mere dull spiritual affirmation you might overhear between evangelicals and a desired convert in a coffee shop, the scenes where Reed's more enthused combative personality is juxtaposed against the fear, claustrophobia, and discomfort of the girls actually makes for some pretty good humour. In comparing religions he uses copyright analogies of pop music -the Hollies to Radiohead to Lana del Rey pipeline of infringement claims- and Monopoly-branded board games, which are patently absurd (though in the movie's best laugh line, he refers to Mormonism as the "regional spin-off" of Christianity a la "Bob Ross Monopoly"). It's the kind of goofy yet meaningless argument reminiscent of the New Atheist movement, that cares less about intellectual honesty than just belittling religion as a concept -something that is rightly called out for its series of fallacies by Barnes at the end of this sermon.
The movie does occasionally make a cogent point critical of Christianity or Mormonism -often in the tides of nonsense. Reed being self-aware of his psychopathy and connecting it in his "defence" to certain acts or traditions of the church is credible -especially in the context of evangelism and its role in violent cultural genocides. But the movie is on a whole less interested in individual religions than faith more broadly. His game that he forces the girls through is about their faith -their faith in God, in miracles, in resurrection; giving them the illusion of a choice in how they act on these beliefs, but always firmly in control. That is the root of his adopted belief system. Reed is a man who it is implied suffered a religious crisis, and substituted his shattered faith in a God with madly making himself into a God to humiliate and terrorize those like Barnes and Paxton. It is of course the opposite of Barnes and Paxton, who have come to depend on their faith as a way of getting through life. And Beck and Woods take that conviction, even if not the specificities of its faith or the tenets that are clearly conditioned into them by the authority of their church, seriously. Where Reed wields faith as a weapon, they understand and sympathize with its ability to be a virtue for believers, whether there’s any “authenticity” in it or not.
At least as I have gleaned, Barnes and Paxton talk and behave like real young Mormons and young devoted Christians do, filtering their every experience and observation of the world through dubious lenses to maintain the doctrines of their belief system -such as an early conversation about pornography capturing womens’ loss of soul. But the film is sure to emphasize relatively normal attitudes and desires that creep in under the faith -past affinities for fast food and in the case of Barnes, a contraceptive implant, indicating at least some sexual awareness and activity in spite of her cloistered environment. Thatcher and East are very good; the latter -who played a similarly religious character in The Fabelmans- epitomizing the meek and more inhibited personality, while the former is decidedly headstrong, and a necessary model for her friend’s convictions.
As first Reed and later the girls reveal more and more of the game being played, as they venture deeper and darker into the bizarre home, the more the horror becomes an unpredictable enigma to solve. It’s ultimate plotting can be convoluted and I’m not sure there’s ever any answer to what Reed’s intentions more broadly are, but the film racks up plenty of suspense and an ambiguous atmosphere relating to its themes around the legitimacy of faith. A couple times it does nearly veer into outwardly occult or supernatural territory where the horror would be less interesting and the debate wholly unserious. But these instead turn into more avenues for the madness of Reed’s psychotically egotistical machinations. And credit where it’s due, Beck and Woods, though using horror aesthetics, conventions, and imagery, set up most of the film’s important beats with the intentness of a mystery -so that you might pick up on in pace with Reed or the girls the little inconsistencies and details that will prove relevant later.
Heretic is a movie that asks you to be critical and sceptical, though not necessarily in the context of faith -which has little to do with how those methodologies are applied in the end. As such it is an unexpectedly fun movie that also teases out the occasional larger theme worth considering without ultimately preaching a correct or incorrect dogma. Instead, it recognizes the nuances of both belief and disbelief, while having adequate fun mocking attitudes at both ends of the spectrum. Perhaps the smartest thing Beck and Woods did in constructing the film was gearing Reed’s character just enough towards Grant’s strengths of erudition and wit while providing ample opportunities for him to channel something genuinely dark and vile. The girls may not have enjoyed their time with him, but I sure did.
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