Heretic Review: Faith meets fear in a stranger's home
Understandably, Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East fall prey to Hugh Grant's sinister charms.
What’s the opposite of the “home invasion” thriller? The movie where well-meaning people enter a stranger’s home under noble pretenses only to wind up fighting for their lives? How about “nice visit?” Until something more clever occurs to me, that's what I’m calling Heretic, the sturdily crafted nice visit thriller by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place), in which two Mormon missionaries, Sisters Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Paxton (Chloe East), find themselves playing a harrowing game of survival with a prospective new follower of the LDS.
The pleasant gentleman who engages Barnes and Paxton is Mr. Reed, played by the wisely cast Hugh Grant, whose very specific brand of floppy English charm effectively disarms both the Sisters and, it must be said, the audience. When Reed opens the door to his home, a cozy if remote bit of business canopied by surrounding woodlands, he’s all teeth and crow's feet, a wolf of hospitality, managing to coax the two young girls inside. Mormonism dictates another woman be present for their visit; he says his wife is in the kitchen, shyly baking a pie. They believe him.
The first few moments in Reed’s tidy domicile are cordial enough. Sister Paxton, the younger of the two, is delightfully passionate about her faith and is thrilled to be able to discuss it with an intelligent fellow like Reed. Barnes, who Thatcher plays with underlying edge, seems like she’s just happy to get out of the freezing blizzard that was building just before she and her fellow Sister took their fateful step across Reed’s threshold.
What follows is an extended conversation that gets testy fast — Reed, as it happens, has studied most, if not all, of the faiths currently in circulation. He probes his visitors about their dalliances with sin (fast food preferences is the topic) as well as their feelings concerning the Mormon church’s use of polygamy and the way it conveniently shunted the practice aside to be more appealing. Then the lights shut off. The house is on some sort of timer, it seems. When the girls, understandably perturbed, ask to meet Reed’s wife, he obligingly shuffles off to get her. It’s here that Barnes notices that the scent of blueberry pie isn’t coming from the kitchen, but the candle burning in front of her.
It wouldn’t be right to spoil what happens next. It’s enough to say that as a horror-thriller (more successful as the latter than the former) Heretic is all about revelation, divine and otherwise, and Beck and Woods are diligent in doling out crucial morsels of information that make their twists so satisfying, fun, and sick. I liked the pie/candle reveal, and not just because it was so dopily plausible; it speaks cogently to the movie’s themes concerning belief — who has it, who doubts it, and how it can be so easily exploited. Beck and Woods’ screenplay is good that way. It’s rife with set-ups and pay-offs (the final one being a stunner of symbolism), but it also challenges the viewer with those tricky spiritual questions everyone grapples with from time to time, and does so soberly and engagingly without descending into a full-on theology lecture or agnostic scold.
Much of the credit should go to Grant, whose seasoned affability makes Mr. Reed’s confrontational and byzantine pontifications more compelling than they actually are. Thatcher and East are suitable adversaries, too, though for contrasting reasons; Sister Barnes has a clear ceiling for bullshit that Reed crashes through early on, while Sister Paxton’s sweet naiveté becomes an asset during his onslaught of ideas. Each actor brings a certain determination to the film (though Grant’s is imbued with disarming menace, wild and wonderful how contradictory that sounds), which underscores Heretic’s most potent question: what is purpose if not to constantly seek answers? Heretic has a surprising riposte that will take up residence in the headspace of everyone who watches it, believer and disbeliever alike.
7.5 / 10
Heretic is in wide release now.
Written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods.
Cinematography by Chung Chung-hoon.
Starring Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, and Chloe East.
Produced by Stacey Sher, Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, Julia Glausi, and Jeanette Volturno.
Rated R for ponderous philosophizing and some zealous bloodletting.