Feature film review: HERETIC 

• A24 Films

You're likely to see a lot of writing about Heretic that refers to it as being provocative and philosophical, and ... I mean, I get it. It's always going to seem startling in the circa-2024 cinematic landscape to find a movie that has any kind of idea in its head, and fans of genre fare will always be keen on lifting up examples that are more than just genre fare. So when you get a psychological thriller like Heretic that includes thorny musings on the nature of religious faith and the origins of scripture, you're going to find folks ready and eager to parse those aforementioned musings: Here's the really deep stuff.

But I think dissecting the arguments swirling through Heretic could end up missing the point regarding what it's actually about, as well as what works so well about it as an exceptional piece of suspense filmmaking. Because Heretic isn't actually a movie about its arguments. It's a movie about arguing—and about how scary it is to encounter someone who turns it into their own personal religion.

Unquestionably, writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods—the writing team behind the original A Quiet Place—come up with a nifty premise, as they send two Mormon sister missionaries to an isolated Colorado home to visit someone who has expressed an interest in their church. Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) seems to be a genial sort, and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) don't really think much about coming into his house from a brewing storm before seeing definitive evidence that there's another woman in the house. It only starts to go sideways when Mr. Reed gets a bit aggressive in challenging some of the tenets of their faith, and their ability to leave seems to be not entirely in their own hands.

Beck and Woods lock themselves into a fixed location for the majority of their story, so it's a good thing they have a few neat tricks up their sleeves in terms of building tension. They're adept at the basics of using their camera both to direct attention and to misdirect it, setting up objects and ideas that will pay off later and turning revelations into excruciating waiting games. Because this is less a conventional horror picture than it is a slow burn of Sisters Barnes and Paxton realizing the danger of their situation, Heretic's mounting suspense needs to emerge from something as simple as watching a single bead of sweat trickling down one of the sisters' foreheads.

Still, it's clear that the battle-of-thelogical-wills premise will be a big draw for some folks—particularly in Utah, perhaps—so it's understandable if viewers become fascinated with the particulars of the challenges Mr. Reed presents to the earnest sisters. Those conversations wander all over the map, from Joseph Campbell's monomyth to simulation theory, and extracting metaphorical significance from board games and pop songs. It's engaging, to be sure, but also not all that different from conversations that have taken place in college dorm rooms for decades, historical gotchas doing battle with sincere belief.

No, what matters in Heretic isn't what's being said, but who's saying it—specifically, a middle-aged man talking down to two young women. Hugh Grant's performance is phenomenal, slipping fluidly between the affable charm that built his film career and genuine menace, but what takes it to the next level is the way Mr. Reed becomes as much of an archetype as the mythological precursors to Jesus he takes so much pleasure in mansplaining to the two missionaries. Mr. Reed is That Guy, the one who knows he's got it all figured out, an extremely-not-online variation on extremely-online men. The philosophy that we eventually learn Mr. Reed is espousing is one he's living, but it's also one we see plenty of contemporary men living in a slightly-less-extreme form, one that allows them to manipulate those they believe have less power, or at least certainly should have less power. While Heretic plays around with the existential terror of uncertainty, it becomes much more effective as a story of the existential terror of certainty—and what happens when someone turns that certainty into an exercise of dominance, whether it's dressed up in ecclesiastical robes or a cardigan.