Mr. Reed doesn't use a knife or a jumpsuit to terrorize his guests. He uses epistemology. In a stunning, centerpiece monologue, he lays out a diabolical flowchart of faith, comparing Christianity to a board game that has been copied so many times the instructions have become gibberish. He asks why their specific iteration of God—based on a translation of a translation of a text written decades after the fact—is the "true" one.
That is the trap.
We’ve seen plenty of horror movies about haunted houses, masked killers, and demonic possessions. But the most unsettling horror film in recent memory—Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ Heretic —isn’t about what goes bump in the night. It’s about what happens when two polite young missionaries knock on the wrong door and find themselves trapped inside a labyrinth of theological debate. Heretic
The film argues that all religions (and by extension, all ideologies) are just different versions of the same trap: a promise of salvation in exchange for obedience. Reed believes he has escaped the trap by becoming the jailer. But the film is smarter than that. It suggests that the act of building a prison for others is the surest way to imprison yourself. In a stunning, centerpiece monologue, he lays out
Then comes Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant, in career-best territory). He invites them in out of the rain. He offers them a blueberry pie. He asks them intelligent, curious questions about their religion. He is charming, disarming, and grandfatherly. We’ve seen plenty of horror movies about haunted
The Most Terrifying Prison Isn’t Hell—It’s Certainty: A Reflection on Heretic
The film introduces us to Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), two young women of faith going about their daily routine as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are kind, earnest, and wonderfully awkward. Beck and Woods do something brilliant here: they don't mock their faith. Instead, they treat their belief system with a quiet respect, making them feel like real people rather than punchlines.