Written by Kenza Bouhnass-Parra
With a near-perfect first part and a less so but still very much enjoyable second one, Heretic is a blast of a film where you can tell everyone involved had a blast making.
We encounter two young missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) as they go from house to house to convert people who had manifested an interest in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the Mormon Church. When they reach Mr. Reed’s home (Hugh Grant), they are confronted with defiance and fall, despite themselves, into a game of cat-and-mouse, whose issue becomes more and more harrowing as time goes by.
Poised as a psychological horror, Heretic finds its niche in the confrontation of human beliefs to its polarity: rationality. Full of philosophical tirades, back and forth argumentations and even preposterous mind games, an intellectual ping pong takes place between the sisters and Mr. Reed as the audience stays on the edge of their seats, waiting for the pin to drop and Mr. Reed’s true intentions to be revealed. Two conversation are constantly taking place, what the sisters say to Mr. Reed in order to save themselves, and where their true belief lies. Boundaries are tested regarding how they respond to things that have been installed in their system without proper probing and how far they are willing to remain in their safe hallway to avoid opening the doors of the uncertainty, and by doing the audience as well is being tested on the boundaries of the faith that it holds in believing the narrative that is being told. It is also a double discussion between the audience and the characters where you are constantly brought to decipher whether they are truthful in what they’re displaying or conceiving the truth even from our (made to believe) omniscient eye, and between the characters and what they are hiding to themselves are refusing to acknowledge as well.
The first part of the film, full of those double edged exchanges, is an absolute feast of dialogues and tournament of masks falling off and on where every single player is having the time of its life. Hugh Grant uses his inherent charm that we all know he possesses to delight his audience, the sisters and us, but mostly himself. Mr. Reed fully buys into what he presents himself as: a brilliant theologian who has somehow figured it all out. Where the film becomes particularly interesting and escapes what could have been a myriad of clichés regarding missionaries is that it does not disregard the sisters as naive or mere slaves to their beliefs. They are empathetic, headstrong, observant, and raise up to his tower of theatrics, dismantling it one rebuttal at a time. And when the argumentations slow down and film falls back on the usual rhythm of psychological horror, the performances carry it to its grand finale effortlessly. Even when its not as innovative, Heretic remains strong in its intent and its deconstruction of faith.
Heretic is now playing in theatres! Try to go see it in cinemas, there is nothing like an audience captivated by a film gasping simultaneously as it takes a whole other turn than what as expected.
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