What’s scarier than believing in a higher power that controls our every move? Not believing in a higher power at all. This dichotomy of human existence is channeled through Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ entertaining “Heretic,” a thriller about the terrifying nature of faith. There have been hundreds of horror movies about religious fanatics using violence to get their way, but this clever film is more of a mind game, a study not only of the stories we’re told but also of who’s been telling them to us.
It’s thousands of years of distilling the same basic narratives into barely different religions that have shaped human history. And it’s all filtered through a gloriously taut lens, resulting in a genre film that’s satisfying on a primal, intellectual level. It’s designed to quicken the pulse and the mind at the same time, something that’s all too rare in genre cinema. It’s also superbly made and wonderfully acted. As is only natural for a film about the vagaries of faith, it loses steam when it has to answer some of its questions in the final act, but it’s still a sharp film that should be a sizable hit for A24.
Two young members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), have responded to a request for more information from a man named Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant). They first follow his dictum and refuse to enter Mr. Reed’s house until a woman is present, but he insists that his wife is in the other room baking a pie. They can even smell the blueberries cooking in the air. So they go inside and begin a theological discussion with Reed, who turns the tables almost immediately, giving the girls an interview about faith and belief. After all, they believe in a higher power, just as if his wife were in the kitchen. Because they’ve been told so.
Without giving too much away, Mr. Reed has other plans for the Barnes and Paxton sisters, who he will subject to increasingly brutal tests. The first half of the film is wonderfully tense, shaped by the young women trying to find a balance between their calling and their growing fear. Can they emerge victorious from something that is becoming increasingly threatening? Is there even a right answer to Mr. Reed’s questions? Beck and Woods’ script is a wonderful mix of religious history and sociopathic behavior. It’s a cross between “Saw” and “Silence.”
And Grant is having a blast. He’s been leaning a little darker in his repertoire of acting tricks lately, and this is his best work in years. He’s well matched by Thatcher and especially East, though. Her Paxton is easily the less street-savvy of the two (just the way she says the word “porn” in the film’s opening conversation feels like character development), but East refuses to play her as a mere damsel in distress. This is basically a three-character movie for almost all of its running time, and it would fall apart with actors who didn’t understand the task as much as Thatcher, Grant, and East do.
With a limited set, it helps to have a master cinematographer on the set of “Heretic,” so kudos to whoever hired Chung-hoon Chung, the man who shot “The Handmaiden,” “Oldboy” and many others. His camera pans around this increasingly menacing house in such a captivating way, peering into its dark hallways and stairwells in a way that lets us feel the tension and claustrophobia so strongly that we forget it’s a set. Its directors, too, are also very good at capturing the scene. love The protagonists’ faces are kept close to their tear-filled eyes and evil smiles. The precision of the filming draws us in with the protagonists, which is essential to the film’s success. (I could have gone for even flashier camera work, honestly. This crazy movie could have used a few more canted angles, but I digress.)
As you might imagine in a film that has so much dialogue for the first third, there comes a turning point in “Heretic” when Mr. Reed’s plans have to be turned into action, and the film loses some of its inherent power when a film about the unknown is forced to show something known. That said, there are versions of this film that completely fall apart, and “Heretic” never does. Thinking about some of the actual narrative decisions of the final act in retrospect makes some of them seem silly, but that’s not the case in the moment where we feel as trapped and helpless as Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes.
The real horror of “Heretic” comes not so much in the violent action as in what Reed’s elaborate plans say about the human condition. Why do we believe what we believe? Is it just because we’ve been told so? Or is there something beyond the many books Reed claims to have read? “Heretic” is a horror film about some of the most chilling ideas in history, including not only that there is nothing after death, but that everything we’ve built our lives on has been a lie. And yet it’s not as anti-religious a film as it seems. It leaves some of its biggest questions for you to answer — if you’re brave enough to do so.
This review was presented at the Toronto International Film Festival. It opens on November 15.He.