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Heretic is the latest A24 Film to hit the screen. The story is about two female Mormon missionaries who knock on the door of the wrong house. What follows is a cat-and-mouse thriller that spreads its message with enough zeal to make it a decent time in the theater in a tired cinematic world.
Let’s take a mostly spoiler-free look at the film.
Heretic Theretic
Heretic stars Hugh Grant as the owner of the aforementioned wrong house. Grant continues to move beyond his English heartthrob days and delivers a great performance that builds on his fun turns in films like The Gentlemen and Dungeons and Dragons.
Grant brings the right amount of charm, needling and menace to the role. He effortlessly swings between grandfatherly and ratty. His villain is a man who pretends to be a seeker of truth, but he is basically a neckbeard atheist who believes he has discovered the “one true religion.”
We should all appreciate grumpy Grant.
Sophie Thatcher (The Boogeyman) plays the older, more worldly female missionary. Thatcher has the most thankless role in Heretic. She is given lines to challenge Grant’s worldview, but they seem mostly tossed in as an afterthought. Despite this, Thatcher deserves kudos for simply playing a female role. She’s not out to beat anyone up and mug for the camera. She plays it real.
Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place) wrote and directed Heretic. They said Heretic was inspired by films like Contact and Inherit the Wind. The writing of the film was prompted by the death of Wood’s father and the questions it raised.
Unfortunately, Beck and Woods don’t answer any of those questions, which is probably Heretic’s weak point. It ends up taking a quaint view of religion, which we will get to in a minute
Everywheretic
Chloe East (The Wolf of Snow Hollow) gets the best role next to Grant. East actually grew up in the Mormon church and plays a more naïve, enthusiastic missionary against Thatcher’s cooler character. This enables East to follow an arc through the film.
East did an especially nice job of growing more frightened and nervous as the state of her plight became clearer. Her attempts to be ingratiating despite being terrified are well done. The girl outside the house ends up becoming a different person inside the house. She is not as stupid as she initially seems.
In this regard, Beck and Woods also do solid work. Heretic lightly ramps up the tension as it goes along. It even manages to inject small doses of story refreshes as it moves forward. None of this is earth-shattering, but it keeps the viewer at least somewhat on their toes throughout its runtime.
It should also be mentioned that Topher Grace has a blink-and-you-miss-it role. He plays a Mormon elder that zips in and out of the film. I honestly had no idea it was Topher. Dude’s face has changed.
Whatevertic
While Heretic works reasonably well as a thriller, the question of whether or not it can ascend above the genre will depend on how one views its philosophy. This is where it stumbles a bit. Grant’s worldview is essentially a reddit thread, and it is never seriously challenged.
It isn’t 1995 anymore. Religion has access to X, Google and even YouTube, too. Topics like Horus and Mithras have passed through the veil into mockery.
Within the USA, lines have also shifted post-COVID, post-gender ideology wars and the soon-to-be post-Biden presidency. The realities of systems of control have become redefined.
It becomes somewhat amusing to see angry ideologues shouting down street preachers after having their worldviews on sex and when life begins challenged and then bending over to the government about mandatory injections, social-media banning of “misinformation” and people losing jobs because they want to keep men out of women’s bathrooms.
The plain fact of the matter is that everything can be a religion nowadays, and we are all heretics if we don’t fall in line with the shrillest voices screaming into the night.
The Buck Stops Heretic
Ultimately, Heretic is a popcorn thriller that makes attempts at philosophy. It doesn’t quite make the grade in that department, but it at least opens dialogue to greater discussions. Plus, its preaching is still more palatable than The Message…
At the end of the day, Heretic manages to be mostly fun due to Hugh Grant’s performance and a tried-and-true formula. It is basically Hansel and Gretel coming upon the house of the wicked witch. Will they be victorious or will they get eaten? You’ll have to watch to find out!
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