Directors/Screenplay – Scott Beck & Bryan Woods, Producers – Scott Beck, Julia Glausi, Stacey Sher, Jeanette Volturno & Bryan Woods, Photography – Chung-Hoon Chung, Music – Chris Bacon, Visual Effects Supervisor – Chris Van Dyck, Visual Effects – Niche VFX, Special Effects Supervisor – Dan Keeler, Makeup Effects/Prosthetics – Gaslight FX Studio (Designer – Chris Bridges), Production Design – Philip Messina. Production Company – Beck-Woods/Shiny Penny Productions/Catchlight Studios.
Cast
Hugh Grant (Mr Reed), Sophie Thatcher (Sister Barnes), Chloe East (Sister Paxton), Topher Grace (Elder Kennedy), Elle Young (Prophet)
Plot
Sisters Barnes and Paxton are two young Mormon missionaries. A visit has been requested to the home of Mr Reed. He invites them in. It is against their rules to enter with only he there, but he assures them that his wife is in the kitchen. As they begin talking, Mr Reed demonstrates a great deal of knowledge about religion and then begins to ask them uncomfortable questions. When the two girls feel uneasy and try to leave, they find they cannot. Mr Reed says that the front door is on a timer lock but suggests they can leave via the back door. He offers them two choices of door, but their choice leads into a cellar where they find they are imprisoned. Mr Reed then introduces a woman and gives her a poisoned blueberry pie to eat. After she expires, he asks them to ascertain that she is dead. He then tells them that she will be resurrected and wants them to be witness to it.
Scott Beck and Bryan Woods are a directing duo. They first appeared the Found Footage horror Nightlight (2015) and followed this with Haunt (2019) about a sinister Halloween haunted house attraction and most recently the flop of the prehistoric drama 65 (2023). What brought the two to attention was their script for the big hit of A Quiet Place (2018). They also wrote the Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman (2023).
None of Beck and Woods’ previous directorial films led me to have high expectations for Heretic. On the plus side was their script for A Quiet Place, although at the time I had placed most of the success of that film on the shoulders of director John Krasinski. Equally, on the plus side, the film was released by A24, which has become the go to place for quality independent releases in recent years. The precis made me think of a film about some type of occult sacrifice – maybe something akin to House of the Devil (2009) – while the title also bringing up unfortunate associations with the notorious Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). If there is a comparison to any film that can be made it might be to Martyrs (2008) and the idea at least in the latter sections of people being imprisoned to prove the existence of the afterlife, although both films are quite different in most other respects.
The surprise about Heretic is just how much its strengths rest in a good script that takes place almost entirely in a single setting and with characters doing no more than talking. That we are in for something unusual is immediately apparent from the opening scene where Sophia Thatcher and Chloe East are sitting on a park bench talking about magnum-sized condoms for well-endowed men, which segues into Chloe telling a story about watching a porn video and being able to see the woman’s soul during an interruption, all before the revelation that the two are Mormon missionaries. The scene has so many contradictions of expectation that your attention is immediately caught.
A very creepy Hugh Grant as Mr Reed
For once, the film’s byline – “Two young religious women are drawn into a game of cat-and-mouse in the house of a strange man” – is not misleading. While I initially expected yet another occult film, what we end up getting surprises you entirely. You call Heretic a religious Imprisonment Thriller if you like. What I was taken away by is how it is a film that talks openly about Religion – and not the watered down Make Sure to Offend Nobody variety we usually get in films. I know nothing about Beck and Woods’ background, but it is a script that feels written with an inside knowledge of Mormonism. Moreover though, it is a film that takes the heretic part of the title seriously and has a viewpoint that openly attacks, if not is almost contemptuous of the characters’ beliefs. From an ideological viewpoint, it is an incredibly bold piece of filmmaking.
What startles you even more is the script. You are being constantly bowled over by the playfulness of the metaphors and analogies that Beck and Woods are making – between various Abrahamic religions and different versions of Monopoly, or comparing religions to the similarities between The Hollies’ The Air That I Breathe (1974) and Radiohead’s Creep (1992). All while digressing off into comparisons between fast food franchises, the religious connotations of Jar-Jar Binks (one aspect that never quite gets explained as much as you feel it should), even into Simulation Theory.
Much of the film lies in its ambiguity, constantly questioning issues of belief vs unbelief as it terms them – even labelling the two doors to the cellar such. What impressed me a huge amount was the contorted multi-levels of the script – how almost every single aspect that occurs throughout has some kind of callback later in the show from the Lou Gehrig’s Disease/blueberry pie confusion and the bicycle lock to the “we don’t talk about Taco Bell.” It is one of those films that requires multiple viewings to take in all the levels of allusion.
(l to r) Mormon missionaries Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East
The downside of this is that you often get characters given to speechifying – Chloe East has a fine speech about The Great Prayer Experiment, but it also made me wonder why a character who is portrayed as a zealous and earnest missionary in the early scenes would be quoting an experiment where the only conclusions you can draw from it are atheistic ones. Not to mention, it is never exactly made clear why Hugh Grant is trying to make people believe in a resurrection other than that it allows him to make some great speeches.
Beck and Woods do not ignore the horror side of the film either. As said, Heretic is an Imprisonment Thriller – at which Beck and Woods do a very good job of drawing out the fear that the two girls feel even before they enter the cellar. There is great suspense in the scenes where the girls are imprisoned in the cellar and Topher Grace comes to the door and the girls try to take the opportunity to escape – just as the prophet starts to stir behind them. There is the abrupt killing of one of the characters that holds a considerable surprise jolt.
Hugh Grant came to fame in the 1990s playing a series of nerdy, romantic comedy roles in films like Notting Hill (1999), Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001), Two Weeks Notice (2002), Love Actually (2003) and Music and Lyrics (2007). As he enters his fifties and by this point, his sixties, Grant has become an altogether more interesting actor, playing highly entertaining throwaway roles in films like Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023) and Wonka (2023). Here Grant has a considerable creep factor, something he has never done before, while playing to the gallery in the various remonstrations he gives to the girls. The two girls are less known – Sophie Thatcher is a regular as one of the teens in tv’s Yellowjackets (2021- ) and the Beck-Woods scripted The Boogeyman, Chloe East was the Christian girlfriend in The Fabelmans (2022) – but both give standout performances.
(Winner in this site’s Top 10 Films of 2024 list. Winner for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor (Hugh Grant). Nominee for Best Actress (Sophie Thatcher) and Best Supporting Actress (Chloe East) at this site’s Best of 2024 Awards).
