A flawed argument for religion

Spoilers for the plot and ending of Heretic.

Mr. Reed has doubts. Played by the delicious Hugh Grant, who delivers perhaps one of his very best performances, HereticThe villain is an intellectual extremist who seeks to illustrate the hypocrisy and evils of faith and religion – at the expense of sisters Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Paxton (Chloe East), two young Mormon missionaries who arrive on his doorstep one stormy afternoon show up to sell it to the Church of Latter Day Saints. The terrible problem, of course, is that he doesn’t stop at just asking questions.

Heretic is a luxurious talk film that devotes a lot of time to the talking Mr. Reed as he engages the missionaries in what at first appears to be a theological debate but is in fact his own cruel attempt at conversion. His intention is to bully the women into submission by challenging their beliefs and examining the choices they make along the way. The real set pieces of the film are the professor villain’s pretentious monologues, in which he uses fast food, plagiarized music, etc monopoly as metaphors to suggest that modern religions are just blatant repetitions of what came before. Bring him this trick into focus examines how the evolution of belief systems throughout history has tended to obscure an ancient truth: that behind it all, the only true religion is control. Honestly, it’s a hard argument to argue, but the guy is ultimately the monster of the film, so his ideology needs to be sufficiently questioned by the end credits. Unfortunately, the film is shaky here. Heretic crackles as a showcase for Mr. Reed’s criticism; It’s far less convincing when the film tries to counteract them. In the end you would like a stronger refutation, a convincing reason to believe so.

In the film’s incredibly stinging climax, after Nurse Paxton stabs Mr. Reed in the throat and he punches her in the stomach, we get one final philosophical parade as the charming madman mockingly tells them to pray as they both bleed to death. Paxton, pious to the end, responds by talking about the “Great Prayer Experiment,” a (very real) series of studies that sought to test whether prayer had a noticeable healing effect – and ultimately found that it did is not the case. “But I think it’s nice that we all pray for each other, even though we probably all know it doesn’t make a difference,” she says. “It’s just nice to think about someone other than yourself. Even if it’s you.” Essentially, it’s an appeal to the power of religious feeling, which fits roughly with the scene’s swelling climax. But compared to Mr. Reed’s structured argument over time HereticPaxton’s answer feels like a wave of the hand.

Heretic is most effective in the first part when it views Mr. Reed’s criticism of faith and religion through the specific prism of interpersonal politeness. The moment the sisters first meet their charming tormentor, everything feels wrong. “The walls and ceilings have metal, if that’s okay,” he notes pleasantly as they enter the house, a small detail that should strike you as strange – but perhaps not strange enough to ask too many questions. In fact, the house as a whole looks strange: nothing seems particularly lived in, the proportions are wrong, the window is much too small. As they begin to talk, the sisters remain polite, even as Mr. Reed pushes the boundaries of their conversation. How do they feel about polygamy, he asks, and how do they answer the questions raised about the legitimacy of the Mormon Church? They argue easily, and it soon becomes clear that Mr. Reed is less engaged in a discourse than in a game of manipulation. “If the revelation of God is filtered through man and man is flawed and man sins and man lies, then how do we know any of it is true?” he asks. “We know it’s true because it makes us feel,” Sister Paxton responds. Exactly, Mr. Reed remarks, having steered their conversation exactly where he intended.

In many ways, Mr. Reed’s target is less about organized religion and more about faith itself. We see this in how he eventually loses patience because the sisters continue to insist that he bring out the woman he had claimed to be her be somewhere else in the house. “Do you still believe my wife is in the next room, despite all the evidence to the contrary?” he asks. “Or did you politely indulge in a lie?” He points out this clear evidence: the scented candle that simulates the smell of blueberry pie; the fact that he has already literally trapped her in the house; the strangeness of the makeshift chapel in which they stand. He underscores the point: “Have you continued to believe in something that you know isn’t true, just to comfort you about what it might mean if it was all a lie?” For some horror-thriller heads, that might be moment recalls a similar feeling expressed in the original Don’t speak evilChristian Tafdrup’s 2022 film about a family tortured and ultimately killed by a sociopath who preys on their middle-class politesse. (“Why are you doing this?” “Because you let it.”) A similar interpersonal structure plays out in HereticAlthough other factors play a role besides the sisters’ religiosity: the power dynamic here has as much to do with gender and age as it does with their faith. Definitely different from the unhappy family in the original Don’t speak evil (although not in the recent American remake) the sisters try to fight back. “We can’t pose a physical threat to him,” Barnes tells Paxton as they’re trapped in the creepy bunker beneath the chapel. “But we can be an intellectual threat.”

There are stark differences between the sisters. Paxton was born into the church and seems much more devout and less fundamentally questioning its worldview. In contrast, Barnes is more worldly. Her mother was a convert, and after losing her father to Lou Gehrig’s disease, they tried a few different denominations before returning to Mormonism. She has an advantage in that she has led a more complicated life; She also has a contraceptive implant in her arm, a fact she has kept secret from the church for fear of being shamed. So it is Barnes who leads the sisters’ resistance against Mr. Reed. In the makeshift chapel, among other things, she disputes his claim that Judaism has a small population due to a lack of “religious marketing” by pointing out that this does not explain the Holocaust and general Jewish persecution. There are also gaps in his logic. Their counterargument is essentially that his atheism also amounts to a kind of feeling.

Given Sister Barne’s general positioning as a synthesis between faith and questioning, one might think she would be the film’s final girl. So it comes as a real shock when Mr. Reed slits her throat with a box cutter. The moment puts the man’s monstrosity on full display, highlighting the figure as an embodiment of the authoritarian aspects of the institutions he criticizes. He conveys the welcoming charisma that draws many to organized religion; He hunts down the believers and eliminates the skeptics. After determining that delinquent sister Barnes is less likely to be enslaved, he shifts his focus to Paxton, the person more likely to buy what he’s selling. The magic trick he uses on the women in the bunker – which simulates the death and resurrection of a “prophet” – is reminiscent of pseudo-miracles in some parts of Christianity. There is a certain misogyny in Mr. Reed’s machinations; When Sister Paxton later finds the other locked up victims, she notices that they are all women. Viewed from a certain angle, Mr. Reed can be seen as a kind of twisted archbishop; the women, his nuns. It’s entirely to Grant’s credit that Mr. Reed works brilliantly as a character, never quite devolving into a comic book villain, even as the ridiculousness of what’s happening on screen increases. In a fair world, he should be in the running for the Oscars.

Mr. Reed is a monster, but at the end of the day it’s hard not to feel like the general thrust of his criticism still holds up, and Heretic never quite comes to terms with this awkward tension. Sure, Sister Paxton appeals to the comfort and beauty that faith offers in the face of horror as sufficient justification for religion’s existence… but is that so? And how can this be reconciled with the violence of organized religion? After Paxton’s monologue about the great prayer experiment, a fascinating moment happens: Mr. Reed crawls toward her, toward her, and for a moment he betrays what looks like sadness. He whistles and whimpers; he seems to be crying. He then holds a box cutter to Paxton’s throat to finish the job… before he does popped on the side of the head with a nailed wooden plank, courtesy of Sister Barnes in her final breath. It’s a satisfying moment that resolves the film’s physical conflict. But HereticThe philosophical tension remains.

For a moment, the film seems interested in the ambiguity of this tension. When Sister Paxton finally breaks out of the house into the reappearing sunlight, she sees a butterfly floating on her hand – a reminder of the feeling she had expressed earlier when she hoped that when she died she would come back as a butterfly, so she can take care of her loved ones. But there is a quick cut after which the butterfly, presumably representing the late Sister Barnes, has disappeared. Does Sister Paxton sense a void here in the poetry of her faith? Or is it another example of her commitment to seeing this beauty? The film stops before another beat that would prove Paxton’s development one way or another. Given HereticThe obvious joy of exchanging ideas is frustrating. One can’t help but wish that all this philosophizing would lead to a more concrete thesis. Perhaps that can be found in a moment that is less about feelings and more about actions. Mr. Reed’s death at the hands of a bat reflects another ancient truth: The side that wins in a religious battle wins not by philosophy but by force.