Writers are writing again and horror is healing.
Directed and written by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, this 2024 film took home a BAFTA in the 2025 line-up up praising Hugh Grant for his portrayal as Mr. Reed.
Categorized as a psychological horror about a man named Mr. Reed who expresses an interest in the LDS church. With questions and enlightenment, he entraps two Mormon missionaries in a game of sadistic faith that could have both sides questioning God.
Small Talk and formalities
I love seeing actors who don’t usually play in horror try their hand at a good scream. Even when it goes terribly wrong it will never not be entertaining. However, Hugh Grant did great in Heretic. After this performance, I was genuinely saddened that we don’t have more content in this genre with his involvement.
He felt very lived in in the worst way, like the only way he could talk to women was by trapping them in a room with him, but equally like he hated being with himself.
Getting warmer
Despite how the rest of this article goes, I have to admit, Heretic is one of my top five favorite movies of recent years. As I say that, consider Heretic a monopoly pawn barely skirting jail.
I like this movie because it touches on a subgenre that is simultaneously over and underutilized: Religion.
Most religious movies fetishize reclusive religious groups to incite distrust in regional micro groups, or they personify the Bible as a morality executioner, either in the form of an authority figure, or a demon. Usually against women. Few speak about the impacts of religion as a source of control, trauma, and oppression at a societal level. Heretic has literal PowerPoint presentations about it with a debate-style plot involving one of the more highly disputed modern religions.
My God, it’s so good, yet…
Let’s debate like Mr. Reed did. (spoilers from here on)
My first time watching the movie I was slightly confused why Mr. Reed switched from the “religious as a systemic oppressor” to the Simulation Theory so quickly. Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) called that out, and said his plan was falling apart due to Mr. Reed’s “Prophet” (Elle Young) saying that the “simulation” he was displaying to them “wasn’t real.”
I don’t agree with this. Later in the movie Sister Barns asks why he’s doing what he’s doing. He replies, “Why do you keep letting me?”
I think Mr. Reed sees himself as a Godlike character whose divinity/dominion is control, and he doesn’t want to be alone in that thought. He has gone through dozens of religions looking for solace, looking for anyone else to be God. He was terrified that he was alone and that his only choice was to search for someone who could make him feel something. That’s why he loved to debate.
Until the girls did. Control has been proven to be an addictive behavior. His original goal could very well have been to find someone to prove him wrong, but once the prospect was offered, Mr. Reed couldn’t allow that control to slip from his grasp. That is his church after all.
I’m not saying they were close to showing him God. I’m saying they were close to showing him he wasn’t God. That even if all of his worst fears are true, that he is some master player in a world of NPCs, that their empathy, fear, and relationship to the world sometimes couldn’t be sold.
He said multiple times throughout the movie that he was scared and was showing them through gruesome presentations a fraction of the fear he was experiencing.
Cowards.
Next time you want to make a point… don’t chicken out at the last second.
Where to Watch Heretic (2024)
I have some experience with the plot in a non-horror context.
I grew up in a Mormon community. I was not Mormon but everyone I went to school with, lived beside, and had sleepovers with were. I know firsthand the amount of consistent routines that are required to stay a “good Mormon.” Church on Sunday, family home evening, school seminary, patriarchal blessings, appointments with the bishop, “magic underwear,” tithing, missions and so, so many more things.
Please don’t take my words as malicious, I went to church four days a week, did sign language with the worship group, got baptized at thirteen, went on mission trips, and developed a genuine deep religious fear that I wasn’t good enough for heaven, because who could be?
All of these things are systems of control that you have to willingly buy into in order to access the spiritual benefits of religion. Heaven, community, comfort, potluck Sundays, etc.
That was Mr. Reed’s point, but in the end, he didn’t make it. He gave Sister Barnes (Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) multiple presentations on the control of the religious institution, but besides the one instance with the doors, he didn’t show them. He told them that all the religious propaganda they fell for led them to him and by proxy it was their fault they were in danger.
Missed Plot Resolution #1: Cult Leader
Picture this. They have actual choices the whole time. He keeps adding harder and deeper philosophical and moral dilemmas, but they do have a choice.
Separate the two girls but allow only one of them the option of leaving with the addendum that the other one would die. Obviously, the two decide to stay for the sake of the other; cue monologue that empathy is a tool used as an oppressive tool to control their congregations.
If Mr. Reed really wanted them to understand, then he should show them through their own experiences.
Levy the woman he’s tried this on… And it worked. Like a cult leader.
He could show how, giving them enough “choice”, but controlling the outcome of those choices, slowly beats people into submission. Imagine if he had one of his women willingly drink poison because he’d placed himself on a celestial pedestal and they had implicit obedience. (“Drinking the Kool-Aid”- Mr. Reed)
Imagine, if at the beginning of the movie when the two girls asked to see his wife, a woman actually showed up. One of the women like the two he “showed the truth”, and if the antithesis of this story was that the human connection was stronger than God?
It could have also been a commentary on women coming together despite the oppressive institutions they’ve been indoctrinated into to keep one another safe.
Like it could have been so good. I think after the woman ate the pie the creators stopped caring about making a point and remembered they had to market this as a horror movie. Cue blood, gore, and a jumping spider jump scare?
Missed Plot Resolution #2: Simulation Theory
Scrap the entire collage of Gods, and the PowerPoint presentation. Keep the doors and the woman with the pie. Keep the controlling subtext. Add magic tricks. Like stupid magic and illusions and THEN let it crumble once the second body is found.
Mr. Reed was lulling them into his belief that their world wasn’t real, and that he was the light to lead them from being an NPC. Then it crumbles beneath their questions, and he begins to lose it.
Or, Mr. Reed succeeds and keeps playing with the women until they aren’t fun anymore. Then he “liberates them” to the simulation (Aka, kills them). Cue the end butterfly scene.
My point is, either plot could have been great, but they had to pick one. (The Mormon church, a notoriously sew happy organization had nothing to say about this movie. That is how poorly they made their point about cultish atheists.)
End thoughts
The sentence I said in the beginning is true. Horror is healing. The idea that Horror is only a genre for the weird is only true for the weird. Horror is journalism. It’s seeing the societal problems before they are spoken about and telling you not to worry.
I will understand that many people don’t like gore, I don’t, but I value that Horror asks me to look at society with a critical understanding of the shadows.
Movies like Heretic and Nosferatu and Sinners are great examples of societal analysis presented as entertainment.
Stories like this are important and need brave creatives willing to make them.
Heretic (2024) - Religious Horror That Could Have Been Great - Malevolentdark
Director: Scott Beck Bryan Woods
Date Created: 1970-01-01 00:33
3.5