“Two young religious women are drawn into a game of cat-and-mouse in the house of a strange man.”
SCORE: 7.6/10
tl/dr: entertaining watch, if flawed and heavy handed at times. Was it worth the $20 I paid to rent this? No.
Heretic stars noted horn-dog Hugh Grant alongside Sophie Thatcher (that emo chick from Yellowjackets) and Chloe East (sup?). It’s a fairly basic premise – two young Mormon missionaries in Boulder, CO are going door to door to sell the GOOD WORD of our one true god, Joseph Smith. A lovely, charismatic Hugh Grant takes the 2 women into his home to learn more about the good word, but he’s not as innocent and charming as he seems….
First off, this movie isn’t really a horror movie – it’s more of a tense drama, maybe a thriller but even that is a stretch. I want my horror movies to have, for lack of a better way to put it, some fucked up things to be going on. I’m trying to feel something in this boring ass existence. Now, sure, at the end, it appears Ole Hugh is doing some naughty things down there in his basement, but is there gratuitous violence? No, not really. Most of the dialogue & “horror” revolves around what it means to believe, and why do we believe…what we believe. As is most often the case with movies that try to brand themselves as “thought provoking” the premise is there but the landing isn’t.
Optimal viewing experience – watching this with an extremely religious parent, or if you have a Mormon friend, them.
Spoilers:
- As soon as Hugh Grant opens up the door(s) to his basement, I was hoping so badly that this was somehow a tie-in to Barbarian. Somehow, someway, this was a meta call back to that beast of a woman and her lair in the tunnels.
- I don’t really understand the little figurine house and how that was relevant. I suppose it was a part of his “game” but anyway….
- The prophets …. Lol.
- “Didn’t you see the hill behind my home? You must go down to go out the backdoor” What? I’ve never in my life seen a home where the backdoor TUNNELS through a fucking hill. He’s also in suburbia, not the middle of nowhere.
- Lemmings will call the ending “thought provoking” but it’s really not. Yellowjackets chick was dead, but now she’s not? Is religion real? Get out of my face.
- Any move that does flashbacks to explain things to you, other than the original Sherlock Holmes, is trash.