This will sound odd, but if I were in charge of The Church of Latter Day Saints, I would promote the heck out of Heretic.  Why?  Because it’s a story that depicts Mormons as being a grade above the nerds of organized religion they’re typically made out to be.  After the thorough skewering the religion received at the hands of The Book of Mormon, any positive depiction of it should be welcomed by church elders with open arms.

Although the missionaries in this movie, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), would never be considered as being hip, they’re definitely aware of the world outside of their bibles.  In the opening moments of the movie, as these two young and pretty girls banter about live-streamed pornography, Magnum condoms and The Book of Mormon, I wondered if the movie was a covert attempt at rehabbing the church’s image.  Considering the image that their church projects, these girls could almost be considered as worldly.  Combined with the heroism these girls exhibit throughout the tense situation they soon find themselves in, Heretic could be a better recruitment tool for the church than any pamphlet or rehearsed spiel.

I can envision an alternate version of Heretic, where Hugh Grant doesn’t torment the Sisters like a villainous schoolmaster in his strangely clockwork home.  Instead, they all meet at a diner over milk and pie and debate the idiosyncrasies of religion and faith.  Call it My Dessert With Hugh.  While I think that would be an interesting film, it would probably draw 1/100th the audience of the average horror film.  Perhaps this is why Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton quickly find themselves stuck in what looks like a demented slasher movie.  (It is and it isn’t, if that makes any sense.)  The difference is that with this movie, the maniac wants to debate the merits of his master’s thesis with you before he kills you.  As far as variations on the slasher genre go, Heretic is as different as they come.

After a long day of being either ignored or teased by random strangers on the street, Paxton and Barnes make one last call.  Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) has stated an interest in learning more about the church, so the girls visit his home.  I did wonder why, after seeing that Reed is a wrinkled and graying man in his Sixties, they decided to go through with their standard introductory routine.  Do men like Reed ever convert to the church at their age?  I doubt they do, but at least he’s friendly and wants to speak with them.  The girls probably figure that if they’re  going to be shot down, at least the encounter will be an enjoyable one.  And it is, for a few minutes.

Paxton and Barnes state that they aren’t supposed to enter a home unless there’s a woman present, and Reed says that his wife is home.  After they enter, Reed leaves to go fetch his wife, who he states is making a blueberry pie.  When he returns, he has a tray with him with two large glasses of Coca-Cola.  Caffeine is, of course, a big no-no for the church, and Reed apologizes for his error.  Barnes smooths things over by saying that having some caffeine is fine if they’re thirsty.  Until the pie arrives, Reed apologizes for asking the girls some uncomfortable questions.  He hits on the church’s history with polygamy, and how for a long time men were permitted to have multiple wives.  The church proceeded to scrub that practice from its doctrine and now pretends it never existed.  Barnes clarifies things by saying that the church’s approval of polygamy had a historical precedence, but Reed responds by stating that John Smith, the church’s founder, included polygamy in early doctrine as a way to excuse his affairs.  For a man who wanted to learn about the church, he seems very well-versed in it.

After that tense exchange, Reed confesses that he doesn’t have a wife and there is no blueberry pie.  (The scent was from a candle.)   He leaves again and after the lights go out, Paxton and Barnes are forced to follow him to a study room.  When they insist upon leaving, he says that the lock to the door is on a timer and won’t open until tomorrow.  Until then, he insists on playing a game he wants to play with them, one where he interrogates their religious beliefs and their faith with a series of pointed questions.  If they play along, he implies that they can go free whenever they wish.  However, as the girls learned at the beginning of this encounter, Reed  isn’t to be trusted, no matter what he says.  Can Paxton and Barnes survive by playing along, or will Reed’s game have a fatal one no matter what they do?

Recommendation

Heretic is an odd little movie.  Although it frequently signals that it’s a horror movie, that’s not what it’s about.  The horror movie aesthetic is possibly symbolic, possibly representing something about religion and faith that I never gleaned.  Whatever the case may be, the dark hallways, bumping noises and forbidding basement effectively ratchet up the tension for what is a highly unorthodox discussion about organized religion, as if a syllabus for an undergraduate-level course on “Religions of the World” was inadvertently combined with that of a critical thinking course.

This is not to say that Heretic isn’t a compelling movie.  Disregarding Heretic’s horror movie trappings, the movie is a gripping cat-and-mouse game pitting two young girls against a diabolical older man.  The presumption is that if the girls can decipher the central argument of his thesis in time, he’ll let them go.  (Or will he?!?)  A majority of the movie is structured like a life-or-death verbal exam, where one wrong answer results in a fatally failing grade.  The repartee between the three leads is a lot of fun, with the girls responding to their captor’s arrogant pronouncements with increasing confidence.  The girls may be scared out of their wits, but they can think on their feet and refuse to go quietly to their deaths.  They’re also underestimated by their tormentor/lead prosecutor, which eventually gives them the upper hand, if only briefly.

Casting Hugh Grant in the villain role was a master stroke.  With his impishly grinning face and dyspeptic attitude, he’s the philosophy professor whose course every student dreads taking.  Yes, everything is on the test.  No, the grades will not be curved.  And no, there are no makeup exams, even in cases of medical emergencies or death.  Grant’s late-career pivot from playing characters eager to make us laugh to those who make us uneasy is remarkable, along the lines of Leslie Nielson’s transformation from playing serious leading men to doofuses.

Watching Hugh Grant gleefully tear into his lines was a blast.  He seems to enjoy playing wicked characters more than the befuddled/affable types he became known for.  As his students/victims, Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East acquit themselves well despite the fireworks from their esteemed colleague.  Over the past several years, Thatcher has been establishing herself as the new Scream Queen (The Boogeyman, Yellowjackets and the forthcoming Companion).  As Sister Barnes, Thatcher offers brief glimpses of her character’s rebellious nature while also hinting at her troubled past.  Chloe East has the more difficult assignment in Sister Paxton, a character who comes off as a lightweight but then finds her confidence (and faith) in the nick of time.

Since the movie is very dialog-heavy and takes place in three rooms, Heretic looks and feels like an adaptation of a play.  If the movie were transferred to the stage with moving backdrops, it would be equally effective.  Although the movie is credited to the writer-director team of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, I want to believe the movie was actually written by Aaron Sorkin (or Tracy Letts) for an unproduced Saw movie.  If you replaced Jigsaw with Hugh Grant, the resulting movie would be Heretic.

Heretic is a unique take on the evil mastermind horror movie formula.  While it does have its scary moments, the movie is the cinematic equivalent of an escape room.  Or maybe it’s a life-or-death game of Trivial Pursuit.  Regardless, I enjoyed its cleverness and willingness to stretch beyond genre conventions.  While I didn’t find Heretic’s theological arguments to be mind-blowing, the movie’s approach to its subject matter is novel and the performances are gripping.  The final exam is a real killer, too.  Recommended.

Analysis

If you’re reading this, I’m assuming you’ve already seen Heretic because what follows contains SPOILERS.

Control.  Everything Mr Reed did to Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton during their visit to his house of horrors was to explain how organized religion is all about control.  Before arriving at that point, Reed first explains through a series of simple analogies that all of the major religions are iterations of the same themes.  His argument is that the iterations of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Mormonism are equivalent to the different versions of Monopoly that have appeared over time, or songs with similar melodies.  Regarding the latter comparison, I thought his point would have been better served if Reed played “She’s So Fine” by The Chiffons and George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” instead, but those songs probably were too expensive for this film’s budget.

Next, Reed attacks one of the central and most critical aspects of organized religion: the resurrection.  He has one of his captive women eat a poisoned pie, only to swap her dead body out with one of his living captives when the girls are preoccupied.  His point, which Sister Paxton deduces through observation, is that the idea of being resurrected into an afterlife is a magic trick.  Once you figure it out, it has no power over you.

The other point of Reed’s thesis is that whether you choose to believe in a faith or not, everyone eventually has the same fate: death.  Reed makes this point by having both the Belief and Disbelief doors lead to the same dark and ominous basement.  Unlike the other tenants of Reed’s argument, he doesn’t spell this one out to the girls.  Instead, the movie cleverly leaves it up to the audience to notice the visual clues.

When Sister Paxton finally understood that everything that Reed did to her and Sister Barnes was to have them figuratively see the light, I agreed with her conclusion but had reservations.  My problem with Reed’s thesis only works on a superficial level.  Just like when Sister Barnes called Reed out for not taking into account that Judaism’s low percentage of followers can be attributed to the Holocaust, Reed’s thesis only looks at religion from one angle, which is control.  I’ve heard several times that religion is a tool used by those in power to keep the masses in check, and I can’t deny that assessment.  However, Reed’s analysis is driven entirely by his cynicism, which makes it impossible for him to comprehend why practicing a religion is so important to so many people.

Heretic alludes to the power of religion in the beginning, when Sister Barnes mentions how her father died when she was young.  Losing a beloved parent at an early age would be a crushing, life-changing event for anyone.  Instead of losing herself in depression, Sister Barnes looked to religion to guide her life.  For her, the notion of a loving god and an afterlife gave her solace and comfort during a dark time.  It also gave her strength to go on living when life gave her no reason to.  When Reed asks Sister Paxton why girls like her allow themselves to be controlled, either by him or by religion, Barnes’ life story is the answer.

Heretic saves its strongest argument in favor of religion in its closing moments.  Sister Paxton could have crumbled after Reed slashed her colleague’s throat.  However, in that moment, Sister Paxton gathers herself and finishes Reed’s game.  While there is truth in everything Reed says about the world’s religions (that they are remarkably similar, that they all are predicated upon unsubstantiated claims of an afterlife, that they are elaborate control systems, etc.), he ignores one critical aspect of religion that defies his objective analysis: faith.  Generally speaking, religion helps us to cultivate our faith; not just in God or the afterlife, but in each other and ourselves.

For Sister Barnes, her faith gave her the courage to adapt to an increasingly hostile situation.  In the movie’s first act, Barnes never backed down when Reed attacked her LDS beliefs.  Then, when Barnes realized that Reed’s game had fatal consequences, she stole the knife, chose the Belief door, tried to reach the window in the basement and secured the matches.  Through her faith, Barnes never gave up hope, even as the situation grew increasingly dire.

Paxton, on the other hand, never displayed any fortitude before Reed mortally wounded Barnes.  Then, to Reed’s surprise, Paxton somehow became emboldened after the traumatic incident.  In that moment when she should have lost all hope for her survival, Paxton recalls Barnes’ advice to keep challenging Reed.  Barnes’s death reminds Paxton to draw upon her faith, which gives her the courage to confront Reed by herself.  And when Paxton is herself mortally wounded, she prays.  Paxton’s unwavering faith is what saves her in the end, which is confirmed by the appearance of a butterfly on her finger.

If Reed had somehow survived Sister Barnes’ fatal blow, he would have argued that the actions of Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes were driven by self-preservation, not faith.  Additionally, he would have explained away Paxton’s butterfly vision as a hallucination brought on by a lack of blood and PTSD.  While I can’t deny those arguments, it’s also true that within the context of the movie, Paxton’s survival is due to her religious beliefs and the faith that resulted in practicing them.  

The problem with Reed’s thesis is that he doesn’t consider that religion is more than what is documented within sacred texts.  He fails to acknowledge that faith is more than following a rulebook.  No matter how hard he tries to overwhelm Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton with his polemical arguments and haunted house showmanship, he can’t make them disavow their core belief system.  In the end, Reed is defeated by their faith, which he disregarded because it was something that he couldn’t analyze or measure.  

Because Reed liked using simple analogies, I’ll offer one based on sports.  Reed tried to discredit American baseball by comparing its rule book with that of cricket without ever watching any games.  There are similarities, but after watching both sports you would know immediately that they are very different.  Furthermore, being a successful ball player means more than following the rules.  How you play the game is equally important.