For a movie with a title as “provocative” as Heretic, one might be expecting the ultimate message of the story to be, well, heretical. In the end, however, the Scott Beck and Bryan Woods-written and -directed movie leaves the audience with a sense of “hope” regarding the nature of faith and the comfort it provides to people. All while mostly relying solely on Hugh Grant “soliloquies” about the fundamental phoniness of every religion in a manner that still serves the sake of audience entertainment. Not to mention making the audience feel “smart” while likely nodding along with the many jaded “isms” offered up by “Mr. Reed” (the cult-like, last-name-only moniker of Grant’s character).
Alas, this approach—this “allowance” that Mr. Reed is given to prattle on and on about his thoughts and his ideas—means that, at its core, viewers are watching about an hour and thirty minutes of mansplaining (minus certain scenes where the focus is solely on the two female protagonists). While Mr. Reed makes some fair points throughout the film (that might have been better off as a play), it’s difficult not to receive his message as yet another case of a psychotic, drunk-on-the-power-of-his-gender man inflicting his worldview/rhetoric on two unsuspecting women.
The women, in this case, are Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher, perhaps best recognized as the younger version of Juliette Lewis in Yellowjackets) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East). Or really, they’re more at the stage of life where they could still be classified as “girls.” After all, the average age for missionaries—female missionaries, that is—tends to be nineteen to twenty-five. Male missionaries have a stricter code for “serving,” expected to go on a full two-year mission at some point between the age of eighteen and twenty-five, whereas single women do not have that “twenty-five age cutoff.” Call it yet another form of sexism in religion (not just Mormonism).
And yes, Mr. Reed would be the first to say that all religions are ultimately the same, wielding Monopoly and The Hollies as prime examples of/analogies for how this is undeniably true. As he tells the missionaries, “I’m talking to you about iterations.” Yes, that’s what he’ll be talking about for most of the script. Though some could argue that, fundamentally, this is a “payback” movie toward every missionary who has ever dared to knock on someone’s door and preach to them “the way, the truth, the life (or light, depending on who you ask),” so to speak. An undercutting method for revealing the utmost “taste of your own medicine” plotline.
Granted, to make the missionaries come across as slightly less galling than they would be in ordinary circumstances/real life, Beck and Woods present Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton as having been “summoned” there by Mr. Reed, who specifically requested more information about Mormonism from the local church in Boulder (where Woods hails from)—though, of course, the actual filming location was in Vancouver. Which, to any missionary, is like the equivalent of getting an orgasm…or at least edging delightfully until the orgasm of conversion at last arrives.
For Mr. Reed, however, the “orgasm” he gets stems from toying with these brainwashed minds, shattering their held-together-by-a-thin-thread beliefs with his cold, hard logic and reasoning. And a man who favors logic and reasoning naturally also has a soft spot for games. Not just mind games, but board games too. And it is in unveiling this little “character quirk” that Beck and Woods (best known for writing 2018’s A Quiet Place) make it known that they are also clearly influenced by some of Quentin Tarantino’s signatures. Including a character—Mr. Reed, of course—that delivers long speeches which incorporate an array of pop culture references. And, to that end, focusing on a particular “retro” song from the 1970s to make a very deliberate and measured point “land.” That point being, essentially, what Tyler Durden would say: “Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.” More and more diluted from its original with each new version. (Hence, the diluted traces of Tarantino in this movie, himself one of the apexes of delivering repackaged pastiche.)
And Mr. Reed’s big beef with this is: then how are you supposed to know what is the “one true” one, ergo the “best” and “most real” one? Logic would dictate that the original “source material” ought to be the “one true” one. Or, in this scenario, the “one true religion.” So it is that he wields his Monopoly and The Hollies parables. Starting by replaying The Hollies’ “The Air That I Breathe” on his record player, Mr. Reed inquires of his reluctant pupils, “Have you heard this song before?” They shake their heads no. “I disagree. I think you’ve heard it many, many times before.” He then toggles over to Monopoly, giving them a lesson in how the original version of it was really something called The Landlord’s Game. Despite the more sinister title, the game probably “flopped” compared to Monopoly because (and this is something Mr. Reed doesn’t get into) its creator, Elizabeth Magie, was actually trying to teach its players about Georgism, a concept that effectively encourages the collective sharing of property and land value. Obviously, that sort of lesson is the antithesis of what capitalistic America would have wanted to impart to its impressionable young board game players. What Mr. Reed also fails to mention re: “iterations” is that The Landlord’s Game itself has roots in a Native American game called Zohn Ahl. So, yeah, looks like someone forgot to fully pontificate.
As he places The Landlord’s Game above Monopoly and then a newer, more “facelifted” version of Monopoly below that, he calls out the Quran as the “newer, second-most popular edition” of Monopoly, while the Bible is Monopoly and The Landlord’s Game is the Torah. He then asks for their Book of Mormon so that he can place it on top of a Bob Ross edition of Monopoly and say, “And finally, after eight hundred years, this: Mormonism—i.e., the zany regional spinoff edition.”
The Sisters say nothing, frozen there for most of this “lesson” like scared and cornered animals. Allowing him to go on, “These are all iterations of the same source material.” He then gets back to The Hollies by saying, “So no, I will not accept that you stand there and tell me you haven’t heard ‘The Air That I Breathe’ by The Hollies when I know that you have heard ‘Creep’ by Radiohead.” The two show more recognition of that band and song name as he eerily sings some of the lyrics, one of which applies to an age-old existential question that also pertains to religion: “What the hell am I doing here?”
Wanting to be certain that they truly understand how far down the iterations go in this life, he asks, “How old are you? Nineteen or twenty? Something like that?” The duo nods. Mr. Reed continues, “So maybe you know Lana Del Rey, who remarkably was sued by Radiohead for plagiarizing ‘Creep’ in her 2017 song, ‘Get Free.’ Iterations. Over time. Diluting the message. Obscuring the original.”
This “let me explain” portion of Heretic all serves as the buildup to Mr. Reed forcing the duo to choose between two doors: Belief and Disbelief. He tells them that it is now the only way for them to get out of his house as the front door is locked and on a timer. Of course, before he lets them get on with the real “game” (that turns out to be super disappointing/a major letdown compared to the hype of the trailer), he must add, “Judaism is the ‘OG’ monotheistic religion. It should by a wide margin have the most number of practicing members. And yet it only makes up not quite two percent of the world’s population. Why’s that? Why is the original less popular than the iteration? Is it any less true than the others?” When Sister Barnes asks if he’s talking about religion or games or music, he keeps going, “It has the fewest members because it doesn’t advertise. Doesn’t have people like you knocking on doors. Selling people a better life, a better board game, a better song… Missionaries are really just salespeople for an organization.”
And the same goes for cults (naturally, Jim Jones is referenced at one point with the mention of “drinking the Kool-Aid”). As a matter of fact, Mr. Reed would make for an archetypal cult leader with his aura of eerie calmness and confident “erudition.” To boot, Mr. Reed, like a cult leader, is looking for any unsuspecting victims he can foist his own beliefs and rhetoric onto. Making him the worst kind of cliché of a religious person despite not “really” being one. And his desire to foist makes one wonder how many victims he’s had before Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton. This itself giving rise to another slew of questions regarding the plot’s total implausibility. If his bread and butter, “jollies-wise,” is missionaries, especially Mormon missionaries, there’s no way he could have gotten away with this whole “lock them in the basement” shtick more than once—maybe twice—particularly in a community as small as Boulder. And yes, Beck and Woods are sure to include the presence of a concerned Elder (played by, randomly enough, Topher Grace) who comes looking for the two women at Mr. Reed’s house only to be thrown off the (blueberry pie) scent.
On the other side of the spectrum, presuming this is the only time he’s ever done this (which seems highly unlikely due to the stockpile of, let’s call them “props,” in the basement), it still doesn’t track that he would take the risk on kidnapping two missionaries knowing full well the heat that would be on him afterward. With everyone knowing he was on these two women’s list of homes to visit and preach to.
What’s more, considering that the trailer for Heretic already reveals one of the (sadly) biggest plot twists—that Mr. Reed is only pretending that his wife is in the other room baking a blueberry pie, but, in fact, he’s really just using a blueberry pie-scented candle to carry off this effect and buy some time—one might be naively hoping for something even more “hair-raising” to appear in the film. Alas, its other big plot twist is nothing more than a bait and switch resurrection trick that allows Mr. Reed to give his final “teaching”: “control” is the one true religion. The thing that all religions (and governments) are rooted in. Even so, it’s not going to stop the last missionary standing from having her faith corroborated—whether her “vision” is hallucinatory or not is left to the viewer to determine…perhaps based on their own level of faith. Or faithlessness.
