Heretic
A24
It’s a familiar scenario: some unsuspecting young women have found themselves in an inescapable situation. The person in control, a conniving and potentially violent man, smiles at them with the sincerity of a coiled snake.
But what happens next is unexpected. He asks them if they would like his help.
This is because the premise of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ Heretic is an unusual set-up. Two LDS Missionaries (also known as Mormons), played by Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East, arrive on the doorstep of the genial Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) to talk about their church’s plan of salvation. However, it isn’t long before they realize they are completely out of their depth. Not only does Mr. Reed know more about their religion than they do, but is asking some pretty hard questions. And even worse, he has locked the front door, making it impossible to get out.
As panic sets in Reed offers them a choice on how to proceed. If they choose correctly, they will be able to leave through the back of his house. He insists that the choice is quite simple, but everything else about him suggests it won’t.
With these game pieces in place, the film suggests that what will follow is a morbid test of faith. It turns out that Heretic is less about faith and more about the cat-and-mouse machinations between two parties: one fighting to prove a point and the other fighting for survival. At first the negotiations are verbal, and the film excels when it captures how women use friendliness and politeness to keep danger at bay (some scenes reminded me of Janicza Bravo’s painfully uncomfortable short, Eat). With someone like Reed it only draws them further into his trap, and the most chilling moments are when they are confronted with how their obedience and passivity are working against them, qualities imposed on them by the religion they were raised with.
Unfortunately, once their choice is made and the stakes are raised, the film begins to go off the tracks and completely falls apart. Part of that is due to the screenplay, which never settles on what the story is ultimately about or what the filmmakers are trying to say. Another part of it is the directors’ refusal to calibrate or rein in Grant’s performance, which comes across as smug and cartoonish during moments that call for manipulation or menace.
Lastly, there are plot twists in the third act that divorce the film from logic and reality, then cloak the ending with ambiguity. In short, there’s a cop-out, a trend that has popped up in other arthouse horror films this year, most notably MaXXXine and Longlegs. Like these films, Heretic has a promising set-up but a disappointing and convoluted payoff, which is a shame. If these missionaries had descended into a representation of Dante’s Inferno (as its trailer suggests), literally traveling deeper into hell, the film might have had a shot at inventing something new.
It's disheartening to say that Heretic doesn’t offer much that’s new. It’s also likely that it will divide horror fans. It is psychological and dialogue-heavy, with little to no scares and a surprising amount of predictability considering the puzzle box imagery promoting it. Its strongest points are some of dialogue exchanged between Reed and his guests before the gauntlet is thrown, like his argument that a missionary is a “salesperson for an organization” and Sister Paxton’s (East) assertion about her faith in the church: “We know it’s true because of how it makes you feel.” The first act teases the uncomfortable realization that everyone’s beliefs—religious or not—are often based on the flimsiest of evidence: “because someone told me.” It’s frightening to realize that simply isn’t enough, yet it’s part of the social contract, and what’s more—something we do on a daily basis.
Unfortunately that question doesn’t hang in the air for much longer. If the film had centered on that, Heretic might have been much more horrifying.