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Heretic’s Ending Begs for a Bigger Idea
The new A24 horror movie crackles as a showcase for a sadist’s critiques of religion. But it’s far less compelling when it tries to counter them.
Played by a delicious Hugh Grant, who gives what may well be one of his very best performances, Heretic ’s villain is an intellectual extremist bent on illustrating the hypocrisy and ills of faith and religion — at the expense of Sisters Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Paxton (Chloe East), two young Mormon missionaries who show up at his front door one stormy afternoon to sell him on the Church of the Latter-Day Saints. “Or have you been politely indulging in a lie?” He points out that clear body of evidence: the scented candle simulating the smell of blueberry pie; the fact that he’s already literally trapped them in the house; the weirdness of the makeshift chapel they stand in. He underscores the point: “Did you go on believing something that you know is not true just to give you comfort of what it might mean if it was all a lie?” For some horror-thriller heads, the moment might recall a similar sentiment expressed in the original Speak No Evil, Christian Tafdrup’s 2022 film about a family who gets tortured, and ultimately killed, by a sociopath who takes advantage of their middle-class politeness.
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