Heretic (2024)

Young Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) visit the home of one Mr Reed (Hugh Grant), who has shown interest in being converted.

In truth, he’s anything but a possible convert, and quickly, the young women find themselves drawn into a perverse game about faith, disbelief, one built on a very specific kind of hubris.

On paper, a contemporary, sort of topical horror movie concerning faith and the horrors of being trapped in Richard Dawkins’s cellar does not sound like a good time, but rather a source for incessant attacks of the kind of progressive smugness that never feel terribly progressive to this socialist, and won’t convince anyone to become a less shitty person. Or, even worse, like nearly two hours of preachin’ time, something that’s to be avoided quite independent of what is being preached.

So colour me most pleasantly surprised by a film that’s nuanced without hedging its bets, dares to be complex yet still have a philosophical as well as a political point of view, and is utterly unafraid to get weird to the point of the most delightful (macabre)absurdity.

Where lesser filmmakers would let things get talky, or preachy, or insufferably smug, directing duo Scott and Bryan Woods couch their film of ideas in the language of the thriller, the very typical cat-and-mouse game between a killer and his prospective victims, so well, it can be enjoyed as a nearly perfect example of its form even if you’ve no interest in the film’s exploration of belief and disbelief whatsoever.

The horror thriller elements are not just window dressing to let a lesson go down easier, yet every set piece is also part of the film’s argument with Reed, the Sisters, and its viewers, exploring metaphorical spaces to better be able to speak about its ideas. That exactly this also leads to openings for clever twists and reversions of audience expectations the film never misses to make good use of isn’t exactly an accident, but a sign of rather brilliant filmmaking.

Being the kind of viewer I am, I’m absolutely delighted by how weird and preposterous the plot is, going to wonderfully deranged places any even semi-realist horror movie would avoid like the plague out of fear of becoming ridiculous, doubling down on stranger elements because they are simply the right elements for this particular movie.

All of this is centred by some absolutely fantastic, visually imaginative, shot by shot filmmaking and three great central performances: Hugh Grant has grown into a delightful performer once he had to stop getting by on charm and is here playing a man creepy, cruel, deranged and terribly convinced of his own rightness in a very precise and specific manner, Thatcher’s captivating as she’s in every role she’s in (and how nice that it’s a really great movie this time around), and East reveals what appears at first to be a somewhat thin performance to be anything but during a final act that rises or falls with her ability to reveal hidden complexities of her character.

Not at all bad for a movie I expected to turn off after twenty minutes or so.

Three Films Make A Post: Decide For Yourself

The Hunt (2020): Craig Zobel’s satirical horror movie (written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof) has apparently managed to incense the shouty people on both sides of US politics (the places where nuance goes to die). Which, having seen the movie, I very much suspect is what the film was aiming at, trying to express irritation with the way both sides tend to turn their opposite numbers into sub-human caricatures with a holier-than-thou approach lacking in any kind of self-reflection. Alas, I can only suspect that’s what the film is actually trying to say, for the script is an abominable mess of “ironic” clichés, plot twists that make no frigging sense, and a tendency to be vague where actual satire needs to be precise, and a general goofiness in the set-ups of its action that robs the film of all tension too. Otherwise, it’s certainly professionally made, but that sort of competence really doesn’t help against any of these flaws; it really makes them all the more visible.

Bloodshot (2020): Also missing the mark is this (sort of) superhero movie based on the Valiant character starring Vin Diesel as a revived super soldier who is a bit more upmarket than your Universal Soldiers or your Robocops. The script by Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer has exactly one good idea, but to get there, one has to wade through all the usual action movie clichés, directed at best indifferently, at worst badly by former effects man Dave Wilson (who is yet another example that special effects knowledge isn’t the only thing a director needs, even in effects heavy genres). That twist is pretty clever but happens at least fifteen minutes too late, and is of import for about five minutes, after which the film returns to the same old action movie clichés its twist is supposedly meant to subvert, still directed without punch or verve, featuring a Diesel who seems terribly bored by the whole affair. I don’t blame him.

The Gentlemen (2019): But let’s end this on a more pleasant note (well, perhaps not pleasant, exactly), with Guy Ritchie’s return to the self-conscious gangster action comedy. It’s honestly pretty great, the meta elements never getting in the way of the film, the jokes generally hitting as well as do the action and the old ultra-violence. It’s certainly not nice (and one could certainly raise an eyebrow at the film’s racial politics if one wanted) but it’s so fun I didn’t find myself caring. The acting ensemble with guys and gals like Matthew McConaughey, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Colin Farrell and an honest to gosh brilliant Hugh Grant seems to have a lot of fun, too, and better, they do project that fun rather nicely, too.


The only major thing I’m not too keen on here is Charlie Hunnam sticking out like a sore thumb by presenting his usual charisma vacuum, but the rest of the film is much to fun for that ruin it for me.