Heretic

Heresy is a doctrinal deviation from established religion, and in fairness Heretic is playing in those realms. However at one point an extended metaphor is based on board games, and that suggests an alternate title. However a game is meant to be played, local variations are referred to as 'house rules'. Some of that's from attempts to achieve familial balance in competitive circumstances. Some of that is that rules aren't read but passed down through oral tradition. Inconvenient rules are ignored, new ones conjured whole-cloth. In the end you're left with something that's called by one name but is really something else. Heretic is much the same.

With a tiny cast, a small geography, Heretic could be stagey but clever camera movements and some effective framing help root the film in film. The performances help, Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East as Sisters Barnes and Paxton are convincing as young Mormon missionaries. The fact that they're of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day saints and their biographies do matter, and while there's a reference to the musical by those South Park lads, the doctrinal deviations of that church matter. This is a horror film, one caught in a puzzle in the same way as Trap and just as effective at creating and sustaining tension.

There's a conversation at the opening where the question "How has God shown you the Church is true?" is a sudden bolt from the blue, a rod (of lightning or otherwise) into waiting flesh. That's a visceral, even sexual, metaphor in a film that grounds theological examination literally. I was recently in London and having Hugh Grant's looming face on seemingly very tube platform turned out to be remarkably apt. Call him a participant, observer, "Mr Reed", "mister read", whatever you like. He might be listening.

I'll join a chorus praising Grant's performance. The affability helps, but what's important is that the English (specifically) class system is one of control. A place for everyone, and everyone in their place. Signifiers like candles and libraries, baking and staff, even who answers the door when it's rung. The root of Empire was the island, the first nation England colonised was the self. I meant initially 'itself', but that's the essence of rules. One internalises them. They live, to borrow from Monopoly, in one's head 'rent free'.

An intense pop-cultural awareness permeates Heretic. This is the doctrinal dialogue of our age. Where once there were arguments about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin now we debate how many Angels could dance with Pinhead. Multiple attributions of quotes ties to the film's thesis about versions, the "influence of one narrative on another". An accident of timing means that responding to "May The Force be with you" with "And with your Spirit" has been preferred since a Papal missal around Attack Of The Clones.

Re-treads, prequels, and re-interpretations abound in Heretic to the point that a sentence that feels incredibly clunky in its expository weight later becomes a counterbalance to something else. That focus makes the presence of one closing track over another feel like a wasted opportunity, though one suspects that commerce had as much to do with it as artistic sensibility. I could not make out what might have been an important line of dialogue, but I can't be sure that this bane of audience understanding wasn't intentional.

This is an A24 production; the feel is evident from small details like the opening credits presented as marginalia or Talmudic commentary. It's also present in quality. This feels like mature film-making - in the sense of expertise. It's definitely youthful in its outlook. Having folk like Topher Grace in minor (but important) roles is the kind of grab that studios are for. Co-writers (and co-directors) Bryan Woods and Scott Beck may be most known for their work on A Quiet Place and 'how nonsensical is it on a scale of one to ten?' thriller 65, but this is a hell of a calling card. Had the Sisters left theirs instead of walking through a door this would be a very different film, but that's the thing about taking a chance. As Bootstrap Bill said in Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest "The die is cast". It's worth seeing what it adds up to.