Heretic may be the ultimate horror and religion movie. It’s also a film you may need to see multiple times to follow the all-important dialog. It’s a movie that would’ve been front and center in Holy Horror. And it’s deceptively simple. As I’ve written many times before, I try to know very little about a film before I watch it. This if often difficult with the internet and people wanting to tell you about the latest cinematic marvel. I managed to watch Heretic knowing only that it was about two Mormon missionaries visiting a potential convert. If you want to leave your level of knowledge at that point before seeing the movie you might not want to read on. You have been warned.
![Non-Believer Non-Believer](https://m5.paperblog.com/i/793/7937733/non-believer-L-Y5qcT_.jpeg)
e two women in on an inclement evening, assuring them his wife is in the next room. He then, ever so innocently, questions them about their beliefs and about religion in general. The missionaries grow increasingly concerned that there is no wife and that Mr. Reed (Grant) has been toying with them. They find themselves locked in his house as he unrelentingly questions them and asking them what, and why, they really believe. Charmingly he assures them they can leave at any time, but they have to pick a door—the lady and the tiger-like—marked either belief or disbelief. (Both lead to the same place, and it’s not out.) Using a trick he attempts to get them to die by suicide. When they refuse, he kills one of them but the other discovers the truth, “the one true religion.” I won’t tell you what it is.
The film is remarkable in that there is no horror without religion. I made a similar argument about The Wicker Man, in my book on the movie. When we ask ourselves what makes a horror film scary, seldom is the answer overtly “religion.” Usually it’s a monster of some description. Or the threat of annihilation. Or plain old death. Religion can be scary. In fact, it has historically been the nepenthe for death and sorrow in this life. Some would trace the origin of religion to that very phenomenon. I’ve been writing for years on this blog that religion and horror belong together. They overlap. They blend. They, on occasion, may be the same thing. Heretic displays that clearly. If I haven’t spoiled it for you, I highly recommend it. I can honestly say it’s the first movie that has literally given me nightmares, in many, many years.