What can be more terrifying than the idea that there is a higher power that guides our actions? The idea that there is no such being. This extreme of human existence is transmitted through Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’s highly interesting, if not intriguing, “Heretic,” a film which deals with the horror of belief. We’ve had numerous horror movies incorporating the idea of Christian fundamentalists who use force in order to impose their beliefs, but this artful work is more about psychological limits, a query about not merely what tales we were fed but regarding who the storytellers were in the first place.
Human history is simply the result of thousands of years of specialization in wars among their followers. It is all presented through a beautifully tense filter, making for a genre film that is both gratifying in its most basic form, and its most sophisticated. It is rather difficult to find in genre filmmaking where it works in this dual manner. And as the context of the story itself seeks, it is extremely beautiful and pleasantly acted. This lead to shrink the intensity of the film as it approaches to the end and attempts to address some of the questions, but still, this is a smart movie that should do great for A24.
Two young Latter-day saint missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) have answered a letter dated several months back from a man called Mr Reed (Hugh Grant). They first try their motto and don’t go into Mr Reed’s house until a woman appears, but he claims that his wife is in the kitchen and them has a large pie. They can even imagine the berries being partially cooked and proceeding baking. So they step inside the house and initiate a relatively serious discussion with Reed over religious matters, who at once turns the tables and starts asking them about faith and belief, and quite reasonably so, Wondrous faith. After all, someone assumes she is more likely than not in the kitchen. After all, all this is because they have been instructed to do so.
Without give away much of the story mister Reed has different plans for sisters Barnes and Paxton which grow more and more intense as the movie continues. Half of the movie is very engaging as the audience can see the young women’s attempts to pursue their mission while the tension is building up. Will they manage to talk their way out of a situation that becomes relatively more menacing? Are there any right answers to Mr Reed’s questions? The screenwriters Beck and Woods have crafted a mix of a religious narrative and complete sociopathy. It’s Saw meets silence.
And Grant is enjoying every moment of it. He’s been pushing the dark side of his character more into the forefront for a bit, and this has been his best performance in a while. Still, he is well backed by Thatcher and especially East. Her Paxton has to be the more naive of the two- even the way she pronounces ‘pornography’ in the first scene can be classified as development, but East does not shy away from the challenge of portraying her ad a mere victim. For pretty much the entirety of its runtime, this is a three hander, which other actors not understanding the assignment like Thatcher Grant and East do, would create a crack.
As it stands, I must say it is quite a bonus to thanks the person who hired Chung-hoon Chung to shoot Heretic who also shot The handmaiden, Oldboy amongst many others. His camera swoops through every corner of the house, which to everyone feels more and more menacing campy dark interiors with longer shadows that could only serve to immerse us even more to the degree where we forget we are watching a movie, peering down its lengthy corridors and towering flights of stairs where tension and anxiety feels so heavily draped over us. His directors also like faces, which is insomnia wry for us close ups of watery eyes and cheerful maliciousness. Such close calls in the construction of the picture captures us with the leads and this follows aptly in the film. (I could easily have gone with more revealing movements of the camera which I feel would flush the absurdity of this movie quite beautifully, however that is not the case in this movie).
Now, this does come as a shock as one would imagine “heretic” does quite the opposite as the plot revolves around Mr. Reed, so it is fair to expect a lot of dialogue. However, eventually Mr. Reed does try to work out his intentions, and so does the film in the end lose a bit of its charm when removing a mask created to portray the unknown. Simple as it might be, there are a dozen scenarios of this tale that could ruin it completely and heretic does not fail in this aspect.
Analyzing certain narrative choices of the final act in retrospect, some seem overly foolhardy, but that is not the case in the moment when we are as desperate as Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes. We also are as trapped.
The real tragedy of “Heretic” does not reside in the bloody pictures as much as in the implications of the elaborate schemes cooked up by Reed. What are our beliefs based upon? Have they just been fed to us? Or is there something more than the numerous books he claims to have read? “Heretic” is a horror film that deals with all the most disturbing ideas in history including quite literally the absence of ideas. There is nothing after death and everything that we have constructed our lives upon has been false. And yet, it is not a film that is as anti-religious as that sounds. It reserves some of the biggest questions for the viewer. If only the viewer is brave enough to answer them.
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