Somewhere in Utah two young girls sit on a park bench, their bicycles propped nearby, earnestly discussing the meaning of life and faith. Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) are taking a pause in their mission to recruit people to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They haven’t had much success today, but they pick up their bikes and plough on, enquiring chirpily of passers-by whether they are interested in eternal life and the saving power of The Lord. They are mostly ignored, sometimes pranked, but they expect this and head for their last stop of the day at the home of a Mr Reed who’s actually indicated an interest in the Church and asked for a visit.
They park and lock their bikes and Sister Barnes pockets the key. The camera lingers on this so we know it’s going to figure later in the story. I believe this is what is known as a macguffin.
Mr Reed answers the door. It’s Hugh Grant, looking like an older, slightly more dishevelled version of the character he has always played: a well-bred, impeccably-mannered, endearingly self-deprecating Englishman.
They parrot their script straight off. He responds warmly, all smiles and dufferish charm. But it’s getting late, it’s starting to rain heavily, won’t they come inside? They aren’t supposed to enter a house unless there’s a woman there, they tell him….does he have a roommate? He chuckles over the word ‘roommate’, asking cutely whether his wife will count. This does the trick, especially when he tells them she’s making a blueberry pie, and in they go.
He takes their coats. Another seemingly innocent event that has later consequences. He tells them the walls and roof have metal in them – is that a problem? At this stage they have no reason to think so, but it has a dire significance that is later revealed.
He starts to engage them in philosophical discussion about religion, about which he seems to have a dauntingly exhaustive knowledge. His questions become increasingly intrusive, even personal. His tone becomes less chatty, more argumentative. They ask, several times, to meet his wife. He maintains his obliging, genial façade but always has an excuse for her non-appearance with the blueberry pie.
The blueberry thing is a recurring motif with sinister connotations. At one stage he asks Sister Barnes how her father died. Lou Gehrig’s disease, she says. Blueberry disease? he asks laughingly, pretending he thought she was making a joke. He apologises effusively when corrected but the penny has dropped and during his several absences allegedly to check on his wife and the pie, the girls start planning to get out.
It takes over about an hour of increasingly creepy exchanges with Reed for them to realise that he has no intention of letting them leave; that he’s playing some kind of psychological power game with them. He seems to have an obsession with bodily resurrection and torments them with unanswerable questions and choices that might or might not lead to escape.
More macguffins come into play: a sharp-bladed letter-opener lying on a table; a block of wood with nails sticking out. The girls become sneakier, more resourceful, but he seems to anticipate their every move.
Cut to an elder of the Church perusing his daily running-sheet. All the missionaries have reported back in by 5pm, except for Sisters Barnes and Paxton. Will he go looking for them? Will he get to Reed’s house? Will they be rescued from Reed’s fell plot, whatever it is? No spoilers.
Hugh Grant is very good as the deranged, religion-obsessed psychopath, and I liked the slow pace at which the filmmakers allowed suspense to build and the atmosphere of claustrophobic menace to intensify. In this respect it reminded me of The Innocents, the 1961 movie adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, widely regarded as a horror masterpiece because of the subtlety with which it creates a sense of dread by making us doubt the innocence of children and playing on our deepest fears about ghostly possession, insanity and death.
Heretic starts out promisingly along those lines but over the course of the story loses any such subtlety and degenerates into what I would have to call a slasher flick. I nearly got whiplash from having to avert my eyes from the screen so often and at such short notice.
Do I recommend it to you? Only if you are a dyed-in-the-wool horror fan. The first thing my companion said as the credits rolled was ‘I’m glad I didn’t bring my mother along’.