HERETIC (2024)

Studio:   A24
Director: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods
Writer:   Scott Beck, Bryan Woods
Producer: Jeanette Volturno, Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, Julia Glausi, Stacey Sher
Stars:    Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East, Topher Grace

Review Score:

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Summary:

A mysterious man engages in disturbing mind games with two young Mormon missionaries trapped in his remote house.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Working for Elder Kennedy to convert people to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, young Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton bike to the remote house of Mr. Reed, who had previously expressed interest in their religion. With a storm beginning outside, Reed assures Barnes and Paxton that his wife is supposedly baking blueberry pie in the kitchen to satisfy the condition that they can only enter his house if another woman is present. Reed takes their coats as the two young women agree to come inside.

Reed, Barnes, and Paxton discuss several topics including Mormon history, the death of Barnes’s father, polygamy, and fast food. Surrounded by analog oddities such as lights operating on a mechanical timer, Barnes’s increasing suspicions about the situation intensify when she sees the scent of blueberry pie actually comes from a candle.

While Reed is out of the room, Barnes and Paxton try to sneak out, but they discover the front door is locked. Paxton tries calling Elder Kennedy, but finds her cellphone has no service.

Barnes and Paxton rejoin Reed in a small study designed to look like the inside of a church. Claiming they’ve been summoned back to their church, the women collect their coats and discover the key to their bike lock has inexplicably switched pockets.

Reed tells Barnes and Paxton the front door’s deadbolt is on a timer that won’t unlock it until morning, so he invites them to leave through a backdoor instead. Reed also calls out the women for lying about receiving a phone call because his home’s metal walls and ceiling disrupt electronic signals.

When the women again inquire about his wife, Reed asks if they still believe she exists. Likening belief in his wife to belief in God, Reed challenges Barnes and Paxton to consider the things they believe simply because someone asked them to.

Reed philosophizes about iteration with regard to copycat board games, plagiarized music, and holy texts as he identifies monotheistic religions as merely being variations of the same stories. Reed also announces he is going to make a disturbing claim that may make them so sick, the women will want to die.

Reed gives Barnes and Paxton a choice between two doors supposedly leading to an exit. Using chalk, Reed labels the doors “Belief” and “Disbelief” as he debates the existence of God. Reed asks Barnes and Paxton to choose a door based on their faith. He then gets verbally aggressive while asserting their beliefs and religion are hollow.

Paxton considers opening the Disbelief door. Barnes points out Reed is trying to study their behavior. She also challenges the flaws she sees in Reed’s thinking. Because they still believe in God, Barnes and Paxton ultimately choose to open the Belief door, but they discover both doors lead to the same dark, dank cellar. Reed locks the door behind them.

In the cellar, a gnarled woman in a white robe enters carrying a lantern and a blueberry pie. Through a pipe used for communication, Reed claims Barnes and Paxton are in the presence of a living “Prophet” of God. He tells the two women he needs them to witness a true miracle to prove all known religions are demonstrably false.

The Prophet eats the pie. Reed reveals the pie was poisoned and the Prophet will soon die, but he claims the women will witness her resurrection. Barnes and Paxton verify when the Prophet stops breathing and has no pulse.

Elder Kennedy comes to Reed’s door looking for Barnes and Paxton. Reed tells Kennedy he never saw the women. While Reed is occupied with Kennedy, Barnes and Paxton return to the stairs where they pull a rug underneath the cellar door to obtain dropped matches. Barnes and Paxton futilely scream and try starting a fire, but Elder Kennedy eventually leaves.

The Prophet seemingly comes back to life. Supposedly offering observations about the afterlife, the Prophet makes cryptic comments that conclude with, “it’s not real.” Reed then escorts the Prophet to another room.

After asking them to report what the Prophet revealed about the afterlife, Reed tells Barnes and Paxton he can show them God if they too are willing to die and be resurrected. Barnes calls out Reed for manipulating them into being killed, but making it look like it was their idea.

Barnes defiantly tells Reed he showed them a magic trick, not a miracle. Revealing she had a near-death experience of her own once, Barnes says she believes Reed has been keeping a woman on the brink of death and using her hallucinations to substantiate his idea of what the one true religion is.

Reed suddenly slashes Barnes’s throat. Barnes seemingly falls dead on the floor. Having previously noticed a scar on her arm, Reed cuts into Barnes and removes a small metal cylinder. Reed presents the object to Paxton as supposed proof Barnes wasn’t real and they are really living in an artificial simulation.

Paxton counters that the implant was actually for birth control. She goes on to contend that the entire ordeal has been a carefully orchestrated series of events, but Reed had to improvise by killing Barnes and claiming she wasn’t real when his plan took an unexpected turn. Paxton describes how, when she and Barnes were distracted with collecting the matches, Reed switched the dead Prophet for a second woman who was given a script to read. However, that woman added “it’s not real” as a warning to her and Barnes, which Reed did not expect.

Paxton finds a hidden door in the cellar floor. Reed warns her not to open it unless she is prepared to discover the one true religion. Paxton descends a ladder and, as she expected, finds the dead Prophet’s body.

Paxton continues on to a room locked by her bike lock. Using the key that ended up in her coat pocket, Paxton unlocks the door and discovers a room filled with emaciated women in cages.

Reed asks Paxton if she has figured everything out yet. Paxton recounts all of Reed’s actions throughout the evening, identifying how he manipulated every detail to make Barnes and Paxton think they were making consequential choices when Reed had directed their behavior all along. Paxton realizes, and Reed confirms, “control” is the one true religion.

Reed challenges that Paxton has allowed others to dictate the direction of her entire life. Having been given a letter opener Barnes swiped earlier, Paxton suddenly stabs Reed in his neck with it. Reed stabs Paxton in her stomach. Before he can kill Paxton, however, Barnes unexpectedly rises and kills Reed from behind using a board with exposed nails. Barnes then dies. Paxton escapes outside.

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Review:

Believe it or not, and the irony of opening on that phrase isn’t lost on me in light of the film’s themes, “Heretic” oddly has a couple of things in common with “Pulp Fiction” from a structural standpoint. Built as an escalating tug-of-war on a psychological battleground, “Heretic” features nearly nonstop verbal discourse. Like Vincent and Jules contemplating fast food from France, a hearty bite of the dialogue, particularly early on, takes a tone that gets its organic sound from pop culture references woven into its conversational construction.

On assignment to convert people to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, our first encounter with Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton occurs when the two young missionaries talk about condom sizes while taking a break from biking. For Mormon women, it’s a topic as unexpected as hardcore pornography, yet Paxton somehow finds a way to dovetail having sex on camera for money as confirmation of God’s existence. You have to hear it to believe it.

Sister Barnes is more self-assured than the comparatively naïve Sister Paxton. Between Sophie Thatcher as Barnes and Chloe East as Paxton, East gives a less natural-feeling performance. Paxton is meant to be overeager and cheerily chipper, but in making her that way, there’s a rehearsed cadence in East’s characterization that reads as an actor acting. East and Paxton both work their way out of that hole by the time the character reaches the other side of her arc later down the line. Until then, Thatcher balances out the duo with reactionary expressions and responses that make Barnes the more believable and sensible person of the pair.

Both women step up their games once they’re matched with Hugh Grant as Mr. Reed, a seemingly congenial man who invites Sisters Barnes and Paxton into his remote home because he previously asked their church to tell him more about the Mormon faith. As the trio’s odd evening together moves forward from talking about board games, plagiarized music, holy texts, but not Taco Bell, the missionaries realize they’ve unwittingly entered a weird web of ulterior motives designed around challenging what they think they know about theology. They’ve no idea what Reed ultimately has in store, but based on the mind games he plays to guide them there, they know enough to be fearful of the final outcome.

Once you see Hugh Grant as Mr. Reed, you’ll be unable to imagine anyone else playing his part. James McAvoy created a somewhat similar dual persona in “Speak No Evil” except even that character still had menacing aggression visibly bubbling beneath an affable exterior. Perfectly cast for Reed, Grant is charming and chilling in equal measure, and he concurrently conveys masterful intelligence and unsettling sociopathy throughout a brilliant balancing act specifically suited to his distinct screen presence and ability range. With Grant in the role, you’re always aware Reed has something smarter, more sinister up his sleeve for the two young women than simply locking them up for Jigsaw-style torture. It’s equally easy to see how Barnes and Paxton might be manipulated by his disarming charisma even when their Spidey senses start tingling.

Midway through the movie, an element gets introduced that turns “Heretic” from a tense, three-person chamber play into something more, almost something else entirely. Further details risk spoilers, and “Heretic’s” exercise in disturbing drama is best explored in the dark. Dialogue-powered, pressure-cooker thrillers that lock a handful of people inside a single location are prone to unsustainable stories losing the suspense’s steam, or at least riding a roller coaster of inconsistent momentum. “Heretic” is an uncommon outlier where the lows are as riveting as the highs, and the entire experience is never not visually engrossing as well as mentally engaging.

“Heretic’s” effectiveness starts with a screenplay where each word, and there are a lot of them, has been carefully measured to fit a particular purpose. Gripping performances power the undulating electricity. Those components then simmer at a steadily rising temperature. Before you know it, viewers gradually transform into frogs alongside Sisters Barnes and Paxton, slowly boiled alive without consciously realizing the dangerous heat thoroughly enveloping everyone until it’s too late, and you’ve already been cooked by the film’s creepy cleverness.

Review Score: 85

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