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FILM REVIEW | HORROR
Heretic (2024) — blueberry pie, philosophy and pure evil in a gripping horror film with brains
Two young Mormon missionaries knock on the wrong door…
Halfway through Heretic, I didn’t duck out to the foyer to grab an espresso. It’s the first film in a long time where I haven’t done that, and though Heretic isn’t a perfect movie, my survival of 111 minutes without caffeine speaks to its greatest strength: it is, for much of its running time, absolutely riveting.
Onto the simplest of premises — two Mormon missionaries meet an apparently promising prospective convert who turns out to be (perhaps) the militant atheist from hell — it piles one intriguing idea after another, giving the screenplay and the actors plenty of time to explore them while varying the rhythm just enough to keep us fascinated. There are long expository speeches, there are tense silences, there is exactly the right number of well-timed surprises.
Towards the end it does lose its grip somewhat, resorting to more conventional horror tropes, and at this point the unreality which wasn’t a problem in the…