One of the most refreshing and exciting franchises of the past decade was spawned from 2018’s A Quiet Place. With John Krasinski starring in and directing the project, he earned the lion’s share of the credit for its effectiveness, despite the script being something he rewrote after being initially written by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. To a degree, it felt a bit like stolen valor and that Beck and Woods’ contributions were entirely overlooked. With their next directorial efforts, 2019’s Haunt and 2023’s 65, it seemed like maybe Krasinski was ultimately the one to provide the right alchemy to make A Quiet Place a success and was rightfully earning praise, given those films’ shortcomings. With Heretic, Beck and Woods get much more intimate and much more personal in a tension-filled adventure about questioning one’s faith that has just as much to do with organized religion as it seemingly does with succumbing to the studio system.
Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who head to the home of Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant), who claims he is interested in learning more about their church. While the conversation starts jovial enough, Mr. Reed begins pressing the missionaries on their own beliefs as well as the beliefs of their church, leading to much more extreme challenges to their faiths. The Sisters, along with the audience, question whether admitting holes in these belief systems at the betrayal of their faith will allow them to safely return to church or if doubling down on their convictions will result in tragedy.
An icon in the realm of romantic comedies, Heretic provides Grant with the opportunity to lean fully into abject villainy, resulting in a character nearly as nefarious as his villain in Paddington 2. Much of the movie is centered merely around characters talking, with Grant deftly delivering complex monologues that detail the overlaps in mythology across a dozen religions, while also breaking down how Lana Del Rey’s “Get Free” rips off Radiohead’s “Creep” which rips off The Hollies’ “The Air That I Breathe.” It’s a massive challenge to make a villain this intimidating based solely on verbal manipulation, with audiences themselves sure to be drawn in by Mr. Reed’s playful mania. If nothing else, we hope that Grant’s performance in Heretic results in being inundated with more treacherous roles in the future.
Thatcher already has a built-in following thanks to her work in Yellowjackets and last year’s The Boogeyman, but East manages to steal a number of scenes from her costar and even rival the screen presence of Grant. While Thatcher gets to lean into the more hardened personality we’ve seen from her in other projects, Sister Paxton’s naïveté is alarming and bewildering to audiences, which is excused away by her faith. This, then, makes her quick wits and resourcefulness feel even more surprising to the viewer, which also makes her competency more rewarding when she’s pressed by Mr. Reed.
The first act of the film is some of the most engaging material in a horror film of the year, as something as simple as three characters talking is milked for every ounce of tension. Whether it be a flicker of lights, the lighting of a candle, an off-screen conversation, or a question that comes across as an interrogation, audiences will be screaming at the protagonists to escape, only for our shouts to go unheard (after all, we’re shouting at fictional characters in a movie). Had the final two acts been nearly as tense as those first 30 minutes, Heretic could be considered one of the most effective horror stories of the year. Sadly, nothing in the back half of the movie lives up to that introduction.
Mr. Reed makes it clear in the first act that he was, at one point, in search of the “one true religion,” a quest many people embark upon. As the movie unfolds, Mr. Reed makes a number of valid complaints about the contrarian nature of most religions and the many fallacies they perpetuate, as well as the countless tragedies and traumas they’ve caused throughout history. Some of these ideas will sound valid to even the most devout believer, yet the further we get into the film, the more Mr. Reed sounds like a mix between Robert Langdon from Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and someone you get trapped at a party with who just completed an “Intro to Religion” course. The movie feels less like a narrative about these characters and more like the filmmakers putting their entire emphasis on lashing out against organized religion, inundating both the characters and the audience with “revelations” that aren’t entirely fresh.
The whole film doesn’t serve as a takedown against organized religions, because it also showcases how Sisters Barnes and Paxton persevere due to their faith, leaving audiences to speculate whether their faith is granting them power or they’re merely misguided. Horror fans who are familiar with the New French Extremity movement well see Heretic as reminiscent of Martyrs, both thematically and in its narrative premise, but while that film made its thoughts on religion quite clear, Heretic‘s message gets a bit muddled and makes the whole experience feel like it was a fruitless endeavor.
One of the major components of religion that Mr. Reed latches onto is the idea of control and how organizations weaponize that facet of the church, thus impacting the actions of all members. The disappointments of Beck and Woods’ previous film 65, compounded with their A Quiet Place script transitioning into something entirely new, mean that Heretic could also be seen as a reflection of their own frustrations when it comes to losing control of something they’re passionate about. After that initial story of A Quiet Place was transformed into a major box-office sensation and their collaboration with Sony in 65 netted only 36% positive reviews according to Rotten Tomatoes, Heretic feels immensely personal in not just its commentary on faith, but also on the idea of losing control of something that came from a place of empowerment and excitement. If Heretic is a more apt reflection of the filmmakers’ talents, we hope that this only scratches the surface of what they’re capable of and we get far more intimate terror from them as opposed to bombastic spectacles.
If nothing else, Heretic entirely succeeds at delivering audiences something they’ve never quite seen from filmmakers Beck and Woods or star Grant before. For that alone, the film is fully worth experiencing, and while the questions it presents about organized religion and belief might not feel entirely new to virtually anyone who’s ever personally grappled with those ideas, it’s admirable that the film is at least attempting to say anything at all. Whether the messy and overcomplicated delivery of those ideas lands with all audiences is yet to be seen, but we’ll take a thought-provoking genre film over a superficial slasher that emphasizes shock over sophistication any day of the week.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Heretic lands in theaters on November 8th.
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