Heretic (2024) – GOD DAMN!

Released: 11th October
Seen: 21st November

“The only thing less trustworthy than a man who questions his faith is a man who does not”

~  Pope Leo XIV

The question of faith is perhaps the most personal question that one could ever be asked. What you believe happens when you shuffle off the great perch that is life is something that has puzzled people for centuries and has inspired art since the moment we worked out that if you mixed some dirt and water you could make a pretty picture out of it. Faith is also incredibly powerful when used in Horror films, as evidenced by the classic horror film The Exorcist. Of course, the Exorcist looked at the ideas of religion and faith and came down pretty hard on the side of “Yes there is a God and a Devil and you need God to help kick the Devil in the dick”. What about the idea of questioning faith? What about using doubt to help create horror… well, Heretic is here to do exactly that and it does so with glorious aplomb. 

Heretic follows two young missionaries for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) who are just trying to get through their mission and maybe get Sister Paxton her first conversion. They’ve been given a list of a few people who have shown interest in the church and one of those happens to be Mr Reed (Hugh Grant). Mr Reed is a seemingly polite man who shows a genuine interest in the teachings of the church but as time goes on things begin to get a little unnerving… turning terrifying when the sisters realise that the front door of the house will not open and now they’re forced to take part in Mr Reed’s games of faith that will test not only if they believe in a God but WHY they believe in the first place.

From the moment the film begins you can tell that Heretic is a film without a single ounce of fat on it. Within 10 minutes we’re already locked in Mr Reed’s house and about to have our first big theological discussion. One thing that Heretic loves is long monologues that discuss faith, from its origins to how it iterates over time to why people might choose to believe without evidence and every single one of those monologues is powerful and pointed with enough tension to have you gripping the seat until you risk tearing the arm rest. Every shot is pointed and deliberate, nothing is done unless it’s absolutely essential and it all works. If it’s not building tension, exploring the core concept or developing the characters – it’s nowhere to be seen here. If you think Heretic is going to give you a chance to catch your breath, you’re sorely mistaken.

Every idea that Heretic explores is done expertly, the biggest just being the idea of believing something based on faith. Look at the opening quote I used in this review, laid out officially with a name referencing who said it makes it look pretty realistic, doesn’t it? Well it’s not, I made it up but I did it with absolute confidence and have no doubt that some of you just believed it was a real quote by a real pope. Heretic pulls that exact trick numerous times by having Mr Reed just casually throw something out with absolute authority and waiting for someone to notice he’s lying. Still, they never do, they take everything he says as fact because they have faith he’s telling the truth. The film interrogates that concept every single chance it can get, why would they believe something without evidence and if they get evidence of something else, would that change their mind? It asks a few other questions about the morality of certain faiths but that would spoil something not in the trailer and I wouldn’t be mean enough to do that, but suffice to say that it’s a film that will lie to you to set up a truly brilliant moment later on.

Most of the brilliance of Heretic, and there’s plenty of brilliance to go around here, is thanks to the spectacular performance by Hugh Grant who should be an Oscar nominee next year (but probably won’t be because that would mean the Oscars planning on doing something cool next year and that rarely fucking happens). His performance here feels like Hugh took all the little things that made his work in Rom-Coms the stuff of legend and twisted it just enough to make it terrifying. From his awkward fumbling to how he would flash a smile to just the silly little dancy gestures that made him famous, all of those are turned into the stuff of nightmares here. 

His smile is unnerving, and the fumbling on some words reeks of a man trying quickly to salvage a situation before he gets found out. His little gestures all come with the threat of violence. It’s everything that made Hugh Grant famous, but he’s made it terrifying and it’s brilliant. I could watch his speech comparing the three major religions to different versions of Monopoly for hours because his performance is compelling. Every single monologue he has feels grand, terrifying and important. It’s the kind of performance you only get from a seasoned performer who has a reputation that they can use against the audience to truly shock them. Were the world fair, Hugh would be an Oscar Front Runner this year.

Now this is not to downplay the work of the two lead actresses of Heretic who both do a spectacular job but it’s also hard to deny which performance the film is leaning on for the whole thing to work. An exploration of faith, why people believe and what it means to believe definitely requires characters of faith to handle some of the work but to be frank, they’re there because we need two people to counter the powerhouse of Mr Reed. Their scenes together are certainly interesting, we get to see both these women as whole people with lives and feelings outside their church life but it’s also a little hard to talk about them much because of how much Hugh Grant is just bulldozing through the film and stealing all the attention.

Heretic is a wildly intelligent and brutally pointed dissection of faith in all forms. It takes the little pebble of doubt in your shoe and tries to forcibly turn it into a boulder, wanting every little bit of you to question the nature of god and religion as a whole. It’s a dark twisted film that will have you questioning absolutely everything you thought you knew, you might even dare to say that this film is something of a miracle and we should be thankful that it exists in the form that it does. You don’t often get weird original religious horror films featuring rom com icons like this, enjoy it while it lasts.