Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ holy terror Heretic casts Hugh Grant as a nightmare nihilist

When cataclysmic events happen — the kind that take time to recover from, if you recover at all — the first thing we reach for is explanation. What could we have done differently? Were we destined to end up where we did? If you’re a person of faith, you may wonder where God is in all this. What do your prayers matter if they go unheard? Were they actually unheard, or is God working all of this for a plan that’s beyond our puny human understanding? 

We crave control in our lives, and in the moments we realize we don’t have it, we tend to spiral. Not having answers, or a concrete way to get them, can be immensely destabilizing. There are, however, some people who take cold pleasure in claiming that the only real answer to life’s questions is that there is no answer. There is no greater goal, no greater meaning, and any belief system that claims to have some kind of guiding principle toward those things is deluding you. 

Writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods know that these people — the smarmy brand of atheist who corners you at parties and yaks your ear off unprompted about the folly of faith — generally suck. It’s not that they’re wrong to believe what they believe, but that the certainty of their nihilism leaves no room for the many things in life that are wonderfully uncertain, and the beauty in admitting there are things you don’t know. 

In their new horror film Heretic, Beck and Woods have created the ultimate Nightmare Nihilist, and a surprisingly respectful counter-argument against his anti-religious screed. If you find yourself wrestling with feelings of fear, anger and meaninglessness as we emerge from (another) traumatic election cycle, the film makes for an unexpectedly cathartic experience. Come for Hugh Grant having immense fun playing a psychotic Christopher Hitchens-type. Stay for open-ended discussions about the value of faith that embraces its mysteries.

Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) are two young Mormon women on their mission in Boulder, Colorado. They’re going door-to-door and speaking to people about their faith, hoping they’ll create some converts. The pair arrive at the Reed house, where Mr. Reed (Grant) invites them in to talk belief, assuring the nervous young women that his wife is in the kitchen baking a pie, and will join them shortly.

The pie, of course, is a lie.

As a storm rages outside, Mr. Reed forces the women to enter a maze he’s constructed in the bowels of his house while debunking the concept of religion — not just Mormonism, but every form of belief. He makes the kind of self-important arguments you’ve likely heard from dudes who’ve just read Joseph Campbell for the first time (or possibly Ricky Gervais). The Barbarian-esque labyrinth Mr. Reed puts Barnes and Paxton into is meant to chip away at their belief, until they succumb to the maze’s dangers and/or Mr. Reed’s relentless arguments.

That may sound miserable, but Heretic is anything but a grim, violent slog. Beck and Woods play with established genre tropes. They provide setups that get buried under a pile of freaky reveals so that the payoffs are surprising all on their own. As obnoxious as Grant’s character is, he’s also witty and darkly funny. Grant suffuses Mr. Reed with a charm that makes it impossible not to enjoy him whenever he’s on screen, continuing his ongoing post-Paddington 2 trajectory of meaty, entertaining villains. 

Through it all, Beck and Woods’ film expresses a genuine curiosity about the validity of religious belief as Barnes and Paxton progress through their own personal, intersecting trials. Just when you think the movie’s about to arrive at a definitive answer, the filmmakers yank the rug out, setting the characters down a new path that makes them (and us) question everything. 

This is, of course, the point itself. One of the pleasures of Heretic is the way it ultimately winds toward embracing the unknown, of having questions that are more meaningful without answers. Beck and Woods are right to encourage us to question anything we hold as an unassailable truth (as if the world around us wasn’t making us do that all the time anyway). It’s lovely to see that they also know questioning faith doesn’t mean rejecting it.