Heretic

We’ve mentioned that there have been a lot of thriller and horror films this year, very few of them have actually been good. But joining the long list is Heretic, Hugh Grant is unexpectedly the perfect person to be in a horror movie. He is normally a romantic comedy person, maybe a period piece here and there but he really hasn’t delved into the creepy and frightening. I remember seeing exactly 1 trailer for this movie exactly 1 time and being vaguely interested, and then I just completely forgot about it. So now that it has reentered my consciousness, let’s talk about Heretic. Now this is an A24 film, which means it is either brilliant, or god-awful but they really don’t seem to have an in-between.

We are centered on two Mormon missionaries, young women. I am going to be really honest, I didn’t even know that was a thing. All the Mormons that ever came to our door were men. The missionaries I met when I had a Mormon best friend were men. I must have missed something.

We get to the conflict pretty quickly, these girls stumble into Hugh Grant’s house not even 10 minutes in. So I am already loving the pacing here.

Clearly one of these girls is very VERY into the church, the other is clearly still questioning and challenging her faith. This weird old man is picking up on her struggle and thus the basis for the movie.

The tension build up is great, this old man is really egging on the girls. They are both clearly starting to feel uncomfortable, both girls are doing a great job of playing the opposite ideology. They go against their better judgement and follow him deeper into the house. The rule about having to have a woman present is a good one, but they screwed up by coming into the house in the first place.

This man has a library/church set up in his house and when the room is revealed the camera does this really cool fisheye kind of thing. It’s very distorted and really adds to the creep factor. Also in this room are two colored doors, 1 blue one and 1 green one.

Hugh Grant is super creepy, he is doing a really great job. He poses the religious question to the girls; Do you believe because someone told you to, or because you have actually felt and seen his presence enough to believe it of your own volition?

Barnes, the girl that is clearly questioning her faith, goes to open both doors. The first one she didn’t want to say what she say behind that door, and the second clearly led to a basement. Either way these girls are trapped inside of this crazy man's house. So that first door is going to be a terrifying reveal at some point.

His whole thing is that Judaism is the original monotheistic religion and all the ones that came after it are obscuring the reality because they are advertising their religion. He confronts the girls with the fact that every major aspect of Jesus’ life and death came from stories that were around for 1000 years before him. He is making the girls defend their faith.

The first door was legit just another staircase? They had a pretty big reaction for no reason then.

Yeah he’s definitely nuts. He claims to have found a living prophet of god, who will be resurrected by the grace of god.

Why are people in horror movies never in a hurry? Can someone explain to me how it is possible for your life to be in danger and you just take your sweet time with whatever plan you just came up with?

Oh fuck what a good use of misdirection. Their codeword gets said but instead of creepy man it's Sister Barnes’ throat that gets cut.

I like that the mousy, flighty one is the one left to deal with this lunatic, it would have been too predictable for the stronger one to have been the one left. She figured out his game and is now having to travel through quite a few connected rooms, even lower than the basement. She finds a room filled with women in cages.

INCREDIBLE camera work used when she is running up the stairs to escape. Truly gorgeous.

She ends up getting stabbed. Cause she’s stupid. Sorry but that was entirely her fault. Hey if you have a stabby thing that you actually need to use, take the stabby thing with you. Stab and then remove the stabby thing. 1) blood doesn’t come out unless you remove the stabby thing and 2) never leave the bad guy with the stabby thing. It’s so easy and it feels like common sense.

Heretic was actually decent, that was far better than I expected it to be. I think it was paced extremely well. It was a nice self-contained film and it did a really good job of delivering its themes. Hugh Grant was absolutely perfect for this role. He was terrifying. The story was really well done and it had plenty of twists and turns without being drawn out or campy. Overall I give it an 8/10 which I believe is the best that a horror film has gotten this year.