Led by a chillingly villainous Hugh Grant, Heretic is a religious horror of taut psychological thrills and intriguing theological wrangling.
Ask any Christian who takes part in religious discussion on the internet and they will say the worst online troll is the atheist. Condescending and smug, their aim is not only to preach their non-belief but to follow the command of their lord Richard Dawkins and “ridicule” those who dare to have faith.
It makes all the sense in the world, then, that Heretic directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (Haunt) would cast a Brit to play their anti-faith antagonist considering that the likes of Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens also hail from the UK.
Grant has played villains before, yet his performance in Heretic is a special breed of scary, a combination of charming gentlemanly politeness, smug know-it-all ego, and cold savagery. It’s Grant at his scariest and yet (strangely) also his most compelling.
But let’s take a step back: Heretic stars Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East as Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton (respectively), members of the Church of Latter Day Saints who during their daily round of proselytising find themselves at the front door of Mr. Reed (Grant). With a snowstorm brewing outside, Barnes and Paxton agree to enter Reed’s house on the promise that his “wife” will join them for a talk about God over a slice of homemade blueberry pie.
It doesn’t take long for Mr. Reed’s façade to slip, leading to a twisted battle of survival as Reed tests the spiritual mettle of these Mormon women through his increasingly violent attempts to convince them that their belief in God is based on a lie.
Beck and Woods – who are former Mormons – deliver an intelligently written and craftily made psychological religious horror that takes its themes of faith, disbelief, and anti-religious bigotry seriously without sacrificing genre thrills, with the burgeoning filmmaking duo playing their audience like marionettes as we are led from one scenario to the next with hand-over-face anticipation.
For those who have experienced the kind of Christian vs Atheist debates that were all the rage during the mid-late 2000s, many of the theological talking points in Heretic come straight from the “How to Debunk Christianity 101” handbook. In fact, some of the best moments in Heretic is when the Mormon protagonists (wonderfully portrayed by Thatcher and East) give as good as they get and call out Reed’s outplayed arguments.
Yet the presentation of those ideas and the high-grade stakes – in which body, mind and soul are at risk – that Beck and Woods attach to them in Heretic results in religious-horror gold.
