Welcome back to the blog readers. As you all know, the last few years have been hit and miss in terms of horror, and I am kind of getting sick of seeing all of these mediocre and horrible horror films. This year alone, I have seen some great horror films like A Quiet Place: Day One, Alien: Romulus, and Smile 2 (all 2024) that give me hope in the genre, but for every Smile, there is an Afraid (2024). Would this film be a Smile or an Afraid? Stick around to find out.
Heretic was written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. The film stars Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, and Chloe East. In the film, two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints attempt to convert a reclusive Englishman, but he turns out to be more dangerous than he seems.
Like I said, I was holding out some minor hope for this film to be good, because this has been a relatively good year for horror. Smile 2 is my favorite film of the year so far and Alien: Romulus may wind up in my top 5 (we shall see in December). The one thing this film has going for it for me was I had head good things about this film from some audience members, but I unfortunately did not feel what they were feeling. In fact, I clearly meant horrible film instead of horror film. Although the one thing I did like about this film was the performance of Hugh Grant.
With that being said, let is talk about it. The character that Hugh Grant plays in this film is honestly a little one-dimensional, and you could argue that any other actor in this role makes this character unbearable, but the one thing that Grant has that separates him from other actors is his charisma. When there were points in the film that I was really starting to lose my interest, he sucks me right back in with that charisma we all know he has. On another note, he does have to do a lot of heavyweight acting underneath all that charisma, and I think he does combine that heavyweight acting and the charisma well enough to save this film from utter boredom territory.
Now I want to take a minute to talk about the message this film is trying to present to us because I have mixed feelings. Before I begin, there is something I want to talk about first. You may know this about me, but you may not, but I am not a religious person. I do not subscribe to any religion (and nothing that happens in the real world will change that). The message that this film is trying to convey is that all religion is ridiculous and based around the concept of control, which is something I surprisingly agree with. I think all religion is the biggest fraud in the world, and I also believe that religion is the reason why every war in world history has been waged. But the one thing that this film tries to say that I do not personally agree with is this notion that all religion is based on some other religion. While I can bet that some religions borrow from others (like the relationship between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), and I can see it in instances, I do not believe that all religion is based on all religion. To me, that concept is a little off and that is the aspect of this film that I think is a little superficial in my opinion.
Finally, I want to talk about the fact that this film commits the cardinal sin of a bad horror film and is not scary at all. Most bad horror films commit this sin, and they think that they are so clever when they put a word in front of horror like "supernatural horror" or "psychological horror." The truth of this film is that there were absolutely no scenes that had the hair on the back of my head raised. There were no scenes where I was creeped out or actually terrified. There were no scenes in which I questioned why I was sitting there (for good reasons). In fact, I was bored the whole fucking time and I almost fell asleep like twice.
In conclusion, Heretic is a lazy, lifeless analysis of religion that features way too much soul-searching and not enough hair-raising. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.
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