Heretic (2024) – Review

“HERETIC”

Heretic is the latest horror film from A24 pictures and was written and directed by two of the guys who wrote the Quiet Place movie, Scott Beck and Ryan Woods.

It follows the story of two Mormon missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) who are trying to get some converts to show that they’re doing a good job to the church elders. So, they visit the house of Mr Reed, played by Hugh Grant, who after trapping them in his home, starts talking through the philosophical nature of religion and challenges them to a game that will test their beliefs.

I don’t want to go into too much more detail about Heretic, since what I’ve summarised is what appears in the trailer, but I will say that it’s a very interesting idea for a film. As a whole, I think it hits the mark on what it’s trying to do, but on a couple of points it doesn’t quite nail it.

First off, Heretic isn’t anti or pro religion. It kind of takes an episode of South Park to a more serious degree- if you ever saw the episode where Kenny and his sister are adopted by a family of very strict agnostics, you have some idea of where the film is going.

Hugh Grant is playing a very typical version of himself, though they do manage to make his usual type casting come off more overtly creepy. Not as if Hugh Grant hasn’t played some villains in the past, I think we all remember his character in Paddington 2, but in this film, it really feels as though he gets to chew the scenery. Despite the fact that he does bring up some criticisms of the Mormon faith in the movie, I would say that the film is actually a lot more respectful of the Mormon faith than many other works of fiction. It certainly does a good job to humanise the missionaries and makes them come off as just normal women.

The film’s first scene does have dialogue that makes you want to challenge your expectations of people.

I would normally talk about other cast members, but this film is really a three-person piece. While I don’t think he’s one of the greats, I did enjoy Grant’s Mr Reed character. I’ve heard some people say that he was a Richard Dawkins allegory, but I would say that he reminds me more of an evil QI host than I would an evil Dawkins. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if this role was written for Stephen Fry at one point, since he does come off as a darker take of a snarky intellectual. This is definitely helped by some of the facts that he brings up to challenge the sisters faith which are brought up by things like QI and Adam Ruins Everything- and the fact that I recognised them might tell you that I watch those things a bit too much.

I wouldn’t say this is much of a horror movie, it’s more of a thriller, since there aren’t many scary situations, it’s more just tense- it’s never really clear just what Mr Reed wants these sisters to do, or if he’s just playing with them until he kills them or he just wants to make a point.

Where the film doesn’t really succeed is the ending. It sort of creates more questions than answers, and the ending itself has a moment that was so baffling that it really made me think that the writers didn’t have a way out of the current situation and just had to write something. I don’t think it’s terrible, far from it, but I don’t think it quite sticks the landing.

What’s more, if you don’t like dark films, and I mean the actual lighting, you won’t enjoy this. While it’s good for the atmosphere, it’s hard to see what’s actually happening half the time.