"What is the one true religion?"
Well, wouldn’t we all like to know that! In Heretic, Hugh Grant plays Mr. Reed, a doddering middle-aged intellectual, greeting two young Mormon women, who have unfortunately rung his doorbell. Throughout this Gothic horror thriller, he will ask them to question their faith and make some arguments about the iterative nature of religions in general. The other part of the film is stock horror stuff, annoyingly distracting rather than complementing the pleasantly verbose arguments.
Reed will lead them into basement horror to show them the one true religion. I’ll not reveal that reveal, but it is as good a religion as Joseph Smith could have offered.
The girls are not without defenses, albeit after a period when Mr. Reed has become a menacing theologian rather than cheeky Hugh-Grant, dry-wit charmer. Horror tropes like dank basements, leaky roofs, and clueless elder sent to find the girls are present but most of the engaging action is of the mind games.
The intellectual tension is a comfortable companion to the usual horror tropes, and writers/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods keeps entertaining us with the mind games rather than usual scare-fest operations. That this thriller is the opposite of their taciturn A Quiet Place is to their creative credit.
Reed persuasively argues that the world’s religions have gotten it all wrong, compounded by innumerable iterations and authority that blocks serious skepticism or simple inquiry. A college professor or teacher like him is rare, especially one who trumpets Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace while illustrating impressively from the Bible.
Heretic is not a Dan-Brown adventure into the Catholic occult, rather it is a Poe-like short story of two naïve young women from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who apparently did not meet such an eager listener in their disappointing day punctuated by local kids who wanted to see their “magic underwear.” I should clarify: Sister Paxton (Chloe East) is a naïve product of her church’s full indoctrination while Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) is surprisingly astute but still young enough to have clueless edges.
Because the girls believe Reed’s wife is cooking pie in the kitchen, or rather that she even exists, the writers/directors establish a foothold on a major argument about the danger of blind faith. Whatever, for former Catholic boys like me, arguing the truth of belief and the risk of faith, Heretic is nectar. One of the best movies of the year.
Heretic
Directors: Scott Beck (65), Bryan Woods (Haunt)
Screenplay: Beck, Woods
Cast: Hugh Grant
Rating: R
Length: 1h 50m
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com