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I have always appreciated movies that encourage audiences to question authority, spectacular claims, and Religion. Although I am not religious, I find aspects of Religion fascinating and curious. My present stance on Religion is best summarized in the words of the late George Carlin: "Religion is like a lift in your shoe. If you need it, that's okay; just don't make me wear your shoes if I don't want them." While I have strong feelings about the Abrahamic faiths in particular, I will say I like The Jefferson Bible and not much else.
The views and questions offered in today's subject, Heretic, are some that I have explored myself and appreciate their presence here in the film, though not quite to the extremes carried out by the titular character. The film offers essential questions and vital points about faith, belief, and the importance of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom, presenting itself in a primarily well-crafted horror framework that is, admittedly, not for everyone but is oddly appropriate for the subject matter and the story's overall message. Not to mention clever direction and stunning performances from the entire cast. However, it does lose much of its intended impact by the halfway point. Though the genre and style of the film may not reach as many audiences as it should, the points raised therein are nonetheless crucial in their own way.
The story follows two friends, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), who are wandering members of the Mormon Church and seeking out new converts to their congregation. One of their stops is at the home of one Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant), who claimed interest in the church. With a massive storm on the horizon, Mr. Reed invites the girls inside for refreshments and shelter. After some small talk about religious history and other such topics, the situation becomes much more dire than the girls were prepared for. Not only have the girls become trapped inside Mr. Reed's house, but they also find themselves at his mercy, revealing himself to have spent a lifetime studying religious history, trying to find the "one true Religion," and the girls must now question their beliefs, faith, and themselves. Will any of their discoveries lead them to an escape with their lives?
While this is not my favorite story about repressed religious truths, I can certainly point to more intriguing and better examples (The Da Vinci Code, The Name of the Rose, and Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth, to name a few), I do appreciate the film's efforts to parallel the horrors of Religions darker histories with the traits of the films chosen genre. However, the film is at its best during the first half, when it's a thrilling cat-and-mouse game of wits and philosophical debate. Sadly, and much to my disappointment, the film loses too many points by devolving into a standard grimy gross-out fest that continues to stain the proper use of the horror genre. While I understand where the filmmakers were going, I wish they had maintained their cleverness rather than resorting to cliché, uncomfortable gooeyness, to put it mildly.
The film also loses many bonus points for my least favorite style of cinematography. Photographed by Chung-hoon Chung, late of IT, Last Night in Soho, and the Disney+ Obi-Wan Kenobi series, the film adopts the modern stylistic choice of extreme darkness with little to no contrast, once again overtly relying upon the sensitivity of the camera's sensor to retain detail in heavy shadows. I have discussed this practice many times before, and I get the attraction to it, but without repeating myself too much, dark scenes always look better with some kind of contrast!
The MVP award goes to Hugh Grant for delivering a magnificent performance that is unsettling and oddly charming, as only Mr. Grant can deliver.
Heretic may feel relevant to me given the subject matter and how it wants to remind audiences of the ever-essential need to question everything in life, and the film might have been absolutely fantastic if it had only maintained the initial atmospheric and tension-building approach in the first half, it loses too many of its good graces by the second half with cliché gross-out factors and poor attempts at imitating the likes of Clive Barker. While it's worth a look if you're a more discerning horror fan than I am, I recommend waiting for the film to arrive on a streaming platform rather than paying a rental price. Furthermore, I recommend checking out any of the other films I mentioned in this review.
For die-hard horror fans only.
Ladies & gentlemen, I am TheNorm; thank you all for reading.
