Heretic

Released 2024. Directors: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods

ARE YOU RELIGIOUS? DO YOU BELIEVE IN the concept of god and adhere to rituals and ceremonies? To those who question the existence of a divine entity, religion is the biggest brainwash in history, antiquated myths and superstitions that come apart under scrutiny. To the true believers, however, it’s worth dying for even if their convictions defy logic and reason.

That’s why I was attracted to the premise of Heretic as a thought-provoking launch pad for a tantalising probe into the psychology of religious faith. The story involves a pair of young idealistic converts facing off with an erudite atheist challenging the veracity of their beliefs. Should be interesting to hear what they have to say.

Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton are Mormon missionaries dutifully spreading the good news about their saviour. They ask random people in the street if they wanted to hear about Jesus Christ and of course people just simply ignore them. It’s not an easy task, what these two young women do. It takes confidence and skin as thick as their Bible to step out and interrupt strangers in mid-step mostly to be mocked or made fun of. So imagine their relief when Mr Reed, the nice man whose door they just knocked on, shows genuine interest and invite them in to hear their gospel.

Now it’s not a surprise that Mr Reed is not who he appears to be. You know that because writer-director duo Scott Beck and Bryan Woods have dropped enough breadcrumbs right from the moment the women arrive at the secluded house that screams “beware!” With the two innocent neophytes trapped, Reed proceeds to stage his performance, part lecture and part quiz show, with the aim of making his hostages question ther beliefs.

Maybe it was too much to hope for a watertight and dazzling dissection of the history of religion as opiate and scam. Heretic is a mainstream movie after all and not a conversation with Richard Dawkins. Reed terrifies the increasingly apprehensive acolytes with an elaborate show-and-tell complete with props and music, including Monopoly sets and The Air That I Breathe by The Hollies.

His pseudo-intelligent inquiry sounds leaky in places but I’m not going to delve deeper. As a piece of light entertainment it holds up and nobody is going to lose their religion after seeing Heretic. The movie does not aim to un-covert you; it’s just trying to scare you. Reed’s creepy and unnerving tactics culminate in a no-win gamble for the women to choose between two doors, one marked Belief, the other Disbelief. Barnes and Paxton make their choice, descend the stairs into an inky basement and the movie drops a few notches darker correspondingly, as it slides into silly horror tropes and starts to comes apart.

In this second half of the movie the two hapless women are fighting for their lives, just like many, many ill-fated women have found themselves in countless B-grade movies featuring dark confined spaces, locked rooms, shocking discoveries, plenty of blood and gore and a demented tormenter. In other words, Heretic has tumbled into a blind alley of clichés.

To be fair, Heretic is half a decent movie. The suspense in the first hour is rather excellent, slow-built and sinister and the performances of the three actors – Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East – hit the right note. There’s curiosity and intrigue in the apostate’s rhetoric, until the intellectual menace turns into physical threat. The horror that follows is less effective and feels calculated to satisfy some requirements for cheap shocks.

Heretic’s salvation is the inspired casting of Hugh Grant. From a charming poster boy for romantic comedies not so long ago, Grant has evolved credibly to portray a psychotic killer with a natural ease, making an absolutely delicious meal out of his role here. Mr Reed is charming and smart; he’s also mocking and patronising, like a blind date gone scarily wrong. This Hugh Grant doesn’t want to bed you; he wants to bleed you.

Heretic is not an anti-religion movie, contrary to how it appears initially. By making the zealous unbeliever a predatory villain of the worst kind, the movie panders to the rituals of the genre and chickens out of pursuing the fallacies of religion and the harm of indoctrination.

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