Heretic (2024)

	Directed by: Scott Beck Bryan Woods	COUNTRY USA GENRE Thriller/Horror NORWEGIAN TITLE Heretic RUNNING TIME 111 minutes
	Produced by: Stacy Sher Scott Beck Bryan Woods Julia Glausi Jeanette Volturno
	Written by: Scott Beck Bryan Woods

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Mr. Reed	Hugh Grant
Sister Barnes	Sophie Thathcer
Sister Paxton	Chloe East
Elder Kennedy	Topher Grace	-

Review

Hugh Grant plays a good-natured, well-read elderly fellow who happily engages in discussions on religion and philosophy with two young Mormon missionaries who come knocking at his door to preach their gospel. What an inspired casting choice he is, and what a brilliant start to this new psychological horror film from the filmmaking team of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (co-penners of A Quiet Place). For at least half its running time, Heretic holds the promise of inventive, intelligent horror, laying the groundwork with a story that has the potential to go in any direction. Could we be witnessing a new classic? The answer turns out to be no. Somewhere along the line, the filmmakers start treading water, and it becomes clear that the enticing, winding road they've taken us on ultimately ends in the same moldy, dewy torture dungeon we've seen countless times before. It's a lamentably underwhelming ending – devoid of the freshness and invention the film had spent an hour and a half cultivating. A fascinating horror character is reduced to a stock villain, and as his clichéd motivation is revealed, the preceding existential discussions and intricate riddles make less sense. In the end, Heretic isn't able to transcend the filmmaking exercise that it obviously is, which is a pity.