‘Heretic’ Only Works Because of One Weird Trick
Take Hugh Grant out of this film and it would be intolerable.
NEW STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This newsletter aggressively spoils things.
When I was a wee lad, I was a Cub Scout1. I personally find this difficult to believe, as Modern Jeff would rather drink a cup of someone else’s spittle than wear a uniform or take part in group activities2, but 10-year-old Jeff thought this was a fine way to spend his time. As this was in the capitalist paradise known as The United States, this meant that some of my energies were expected to be expended in the pursuit of fundraising for my Pack and the scouts in general, for what value has life if you’re not securing capital for someone3?
One way they pursued sweet, sweet money was via Tom-Wat, which is a fundraising program used by a lot of groups. In practice, what this meant for me is that I was given a cardboard suitcase filled with samples of Tom-Wat products, which ranged from jokey pranks to surprisingly useful items. My job, believe it or not, was to lug this box to people’s houses (in uniform, of course4) and play the door-to-door salesman. I was adorable in my little uniform, so I was surprisingly successful, but it also meant actually going into strangers’ homes and demonstrating the stuff5.
This is where I learned my deep distrust of people and my fear of their houses. Because of The Talkers.
The Talkers were those chatty folks who were delighted to find a captive audience has delivered themselves to their front door. These folks would pretend to be interested in my wares, then bore me to tears with lengthy monologues about their lives, their kids, and whatever insane shit was going through their heads. It was legitimately scarring6.
Which brings me, of course, to Heretic, a film that has been described as a film about “the realest horrors: a dude shouting ‘debate me!’”
I’m Something of a Scientist Myself
That’s not an inaccurate statement! The film centers on two young Sister Missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher), who show up at the house of Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) because he requested more information about the Church7. They’re tricked into entering the house despite a lack of a female chaperon (because Reed tells them his wife is in the kitchen, and because it’s raining like hell) and quickly realize they’re trapped: The front door won’t open, and Mr. Reed has no intention of letting them leave … without a debate about religion8.
There’s more to this, but that’s the thrust of it: Reed goes through a lot of trouble to trap two young women in his heavily customized house so he can lecture them about religion and slowly manipulate them into accepting his power over them, similarly to the way they’ve accepted religion’s power over them9. It’s an enjoyable, unpredictable film, and there’s some real tension in the middle as the girls struggle to find ways to extricate themselves from the situation. But in the end there’s only one reason this movie works at, and that reason’s name is Hugh Grant. That’s because there are long stretches of this film that are just monologues from Mr. Reed that have all the energy of me closing the bar on a Saturday night and deciding it’s the perfect time to mansplain why the Designated Hitter rule destroyed baseball10.
You're Just Like An Angel, Your Skin Makes Me Cry
Reed’s manipulations begin subtly—he plays the part of an honestly curious person who has spent some time seeking a spiritual outlet, someone who just wants to know more about Mormonism11. He slowly reveals that he knows quite a lot about the Mormon Church, and makes some mini-speeches to trip up the girls. But he really gets going when he finally lures them deeper into the house, into a room decorated like a church, where he spends a very, very long time explaining that all religions are just iterations of each other and, going back further in time, of ancient myths. He explains the history of Monopoly, explains how Radiohead was sued by The Hollies over similarities between “Creep” and “The Air That I Breathe” and then turned around and sued Lana Del Rey over similarities between “Get Free” and “Creep,” and explains that one reason Judaism remains a tiny fraction of the world’s population is their lack of outreach in the form of missionaries like Paxton and Barnes12.
It’s exhausting, frankly. It’s a lot of mansplaining, and the fact that it’s thematically intentional doesn’t make it any less wearying … except that Hugh Grant brings such a gelatinous charm to his line readings, so much dark charisma, that it carries you through the whole section without a scratch13. What could have been a brutally dead section of the story comes alive thanks to his skills as an actor.
On the page, these scenes would be blocks of text, walls of words that would be numbing to pore over—especially if you have had access to the internet recently and maybe already knew most of these stories14. But Grant pulls it off (assisted by solid direction from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, and editing from Justin Li), and he gets a huge lift from his on-screen persona as an affable, gangly nice guy with an edge, a persona he’s been sharpening for decades. Could another actor have kept the plates in the air like Grant does? Sure, but I can’t think of one off the top of my head. The entire movie succeeds because Grant’s performance succeeds.
This is similar to how my pants stay up (most of the time) because of my intense concentration and superior muscle tone, because the zipper hasn’t worked in years and I don’t own a belt. The pants succeed because my performance succeeds.
NEXT WEEK: Alien: Romulus chooses mediocrity.
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Eventually an Eagle Scout, which many people to this day hurtfully refuse to believe solely because generally you have to be smart, pure of heart, and dedicated to be an Eagle Scout. Like I said, hurtful.
Unless we consider the flannel shirt and Dickies I wear every day to be a sort of uniform. A Crazy Person uniform, perhaps? Or just Old Man?
The answer, as we all know, is zero. The fact that many of us didn’t spend our short, unhappy lives working in the mines will eventually be viewed as an historical blip.
Doubt me if you wish, but as a 10-year old in a Cub Scout uniform my cuteness reached superpower levels. If I’d known that this was also Peak Jeff I might have used that power more wisely.
How was I not abducted and sold into slavery as a child? I basically roamed around unsupervised, with the self-preservation instinct of a rock.
Then again, what social interaction isn’t, amiright?
Discovering that this is a real thing you can actually do is like the third-most disturbing aspect of the story.
We’ve reached that moment in history where the easiest way to make me distrust you on a primal level is for you to mention religion of any sort or have any article of clothing or merchanidse with the American flag on it.
I haven’t been to church voluntarily since I was 14 and I have to tell you: Zero regrets. All my memories of Church as a kid center on being so bored I thought my organs were going to shut down.
If you’re interested, email me and I’ll you a link to a 4-hour podcast I made about this subject
One would think the LDS church would be slightly more skeptical of people who claim to be curious about Mormonism, right?
This is all one scene.
Sort of the way sweet, sweet whiskey carries me through most social gatherings these days. Bonus: After each gathering, fewer and fewer people invite me to things, for some reason.
Or am I the only one who spends hours every day tunneling into subreddits with rat-like intensity?
Hugh Grant's performance is realistically affable and threatening, and the writing is persuasive and provocative... and then the film doesn't know where to go. It's as if the executives said 'we need to have a lot of blood and gore and schlocky stuff at the end'. So suddenly people are getting slashed with knives or stabbed, and ridiculously coming back from the dead when the plot needs another jump moment. What a great shame. So I don't think Heretic works at all,