Welcome, boils and ghouls, to our Spooky Season movie roundtable! Blaine Grimes, Blake Collier, Caleb Stallings, and I have selected five films to ring in Halloweentide and the thinning of the veil. We begin this week with Blake’s selection, 2024’s Heretic, so pull up a seat and grab a slice of the blueberry pie cooling in the kitchen.
Caleb: What did we think, boys?
Blake: This is my third time watching it, and I still adore it.
Ian: I need a Virgil to guide me, because I’m not sure where the Dante allusions are that Blake keeps mentioning besides the, you know, framed picture of “Dante’s Inferno.”
Blake: It’s the slow descent as the narrative goes until we reach the frozen center with the women locked in cages. Hugh Grant’s character, Reed, is clearly a trickster/tempter/Satan archetype. The framed picture is just the moment where the writers were like, “Okay dummy, get it?”
Ian: Abandon all cope ye who enter here. Call me a Philistine, but Satan is frozen in the lowest circle, so I didn’t get it.
Caleb: Yeah, I don’t buy the Dante stuff. At best, it’s a passing allusion. I like it overall, but I can’t get this one Letterboxd review out of my head: “Jigsaw if he were an insufferable Reddit atheist.”
Blake: I’d say that the iteration monologue is smarter than most Reddit atheists could come up with.
Caleb: But Sister Barnes gets him on the ropes pretty quick. Reed ignores so many details in constructing his narrative that all religions become the same.
Ian: I enjoyed it a good deal, but I thought its quality was in the heroines being up for an intellectual fight rather than in Reed’s sophomoric screeds.
Blake: They may be sophomoric for people who are used to incredibly online atheists, but I haven’t interacted with many at all. So these versions of arguments have never been heard by me. Then you add Grant’s delivery, and I was like butter in his hands. It was like a good session of proper debate. Add in the music and the ratcheting tension, and I was in for the whole runtime.
Ian: I like how this film shows the self-involved wickedness of unbelief. It’s not neutral, objective, or detached. It’s involved in the very things it cites as reasons for its unbelief.
Caleb: I have little patience for people who argue God is cruel because of their perception of his silence and absence, but then they turn around and are actively manipulative and malevolent.
Blake: I think this is where I found myself really taken with the film: I hear the insufferable arguments from Grant, and I automatically am predisposed to think this is the character I’m supposed to root for over and against the bigoted Christian/religious person. And then I realize, third time in, even, that no, this is the evil one. The religious ones are the smart/cunning protagonists. Grant could deliver the worst monologue, and I’d listen contentedly
Ian: His charm is absolute!
Caleb: I’m curious what you all make of Topher Grace’s bishop character.
Ian: Shoot, I was happy to see Topher Grace working!
Blake: He’s kind of a throwaway for one (really good) gag.
Ian: I think I was supposed to laugh, but it felt misplaced.
Blake: His makeup was subpar at best. I didn’t believe his existence in the film as a Mormon bishop.
Ian: I think the script’s intelligence is largely in how Mr. Reddit’s crap is rebuffed. But the returning-to-Reed’s-house-to drop-off-a-pamphlet gag felt like a step down to me.
Blake: I giggled every time. Call me a simpleton.
Caleb: Also, Sophie Thatcher has been on a generational run since 2023. The Boogeyman, this, Companion, MaXXXine, and Her Private Hell? What a spate!
Blake: I do enjoy her, even though I’ve only seen this and Companion. But her cover of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is actually surprisingly effective.
Caleb: Wait, that was her??
Blake: Yep!
Ian: In the film proper, when I saw Reed’s miniature prison, I got pretty scared worrying there was Hereditary residue splattering onto this. But it turned out to be kind of unimportant?
Blake: Yep. I think it was a way to visualize the *ahem* DANTE-esque maze of the house.
Ian: Sorry. I dante see any parallel there …
Much of this film felt like the basement sequence of Zodiac but, humorously, when they were yet upstairs, before any of them moved to the basement. It made me think that was part of why Blake is so smitten with it.
Blake: There is definitely some truth to that. I’m also a sucker for single-setting films. I think there’s a reading where Reed isn’t actually so much an atheist as he is someone who is willing to sell his soul to find the “one true religion” as he calls it. Had more than a touch of Cthulhian mythos, man using rationality to overreach into realms not meant for him.
Caleb: I also wondered if he was perhaps affected by some kind of mental illness, as he seems partially taken with conspiratorial ideas about living in a simulation.
Blake: The other sister calls him out on his nonsense. He was reaching for something when the “prophet” decided to go off-script. I don’t think he actually believed it; he was trying to cover up something he didn’t have “control” over. Simulation theory is just solipsist philosophical thought with a digital veneer.
Ian: Yeah, I agree: I think he only argues like Dollar Store atheists, but he is after the pot at the end of the rainbow.
Caleb: Which is consistent with his own self-deification.
Ian: Boom. He’s the one person that can see the stupid elephant in the tired analogy. I suppose I was waiting for him to be a devil, but it’s consistent tonally and logically for him to be the man who wants to believe but “sees through” everything. Reed shows how man is haunted by God but often will not have him as he is.
Blake: I think this is giving him too much credit, even, haha.
Ian: On a different note, the exterior shots of the storm are pretty much my Platonic ideal of autumnal weather. And back to a prior note, I’m interested to see if Blaine sensed some strong stench of Dante in it.
Blaine: I feel like the Inferno stuff is mostly fun window dressing because yeah, I’m not convinced any exploration of that is there in a substantive way. But I do like the idea that Mr. Reed designed his own topsy-turvy version of Dante’s Hell in his house.
Blake: That’s cuz y’all are seeing with your head and not yo heart.
Ian: Easily the most TikTok thing Blake has ever said.
Blaine: Y’all mentioned the Reddit bro ethos of Reed. One thing we might typically expect to accompany that in this kind of movie is a naive and shallow depiction of faith.
We get hints of this early on. Barnes has clearly gone through some stuff and has a storied past, while Paxton projects a more enthusiastic faith. Mr. Reed picks up on this and seems to target much of his diatribe towards Barnes.
So, later, when Mr. Reed asks them to choose between the door of belief and disbelief, we might expect Barnes to more readily opt for the latter. The exact opposite of this happens.
Blake: It says a lot that the assumption for those who are believers or want to believe are credulous in the worst ways, while those who disbelieve or do not want to believe are considered rational and neutral.
Blaine: The film seems to be making a point about how faith grows stronger during hardships, trials, etc. The testing of Barnes’ faith has produced perseverance, even if that virtue, on the face of it, looks most susceptible to breakage.
And then the butterfly that suddenly appears. Early on, Paxton says something to the effect that she would come back as a butterfly. I think — correct me if I’m wrong — that she says she’d land right on the finger to let them know it was her.
Well, the butterfly at the end doesn’t do that. It lands on Paxton’s hand, but not right on her finger. I think that’s a nice touch.
Blake: Then there is a glitch and it disappears. So maybe the simulation theory was right after all. I liked that touch, too, but also didn’t know what to make of the meaning of its disappearance.
Ian: Yes, the music swells as she regards the butterfly, and then suddenly it cuts to silence as it disappears. The glitch is interesting because it suggests more than wishful thinking hallucination.
Blaine: I think one of the last things Paxton says in the film is that she prays to feel connected to other people more than out of a real sense of conviction?
Ian: Yeah, that was disappointing. She says the findings of a prayer experiment were “conclusive” and says it doesn’t matter because prayer is about caring for others.
Blake: Yeah, but also that is coming from someone who is still largely surface in their faith. This appears to be the first major suffering she has gone through. So while I didn’t care for that line, it didn’t ring false for her character in my mind.
Ian: I also like that, to Blaine’s point, she’s bolstered by her sister who was killed rather than caving after that happens. Anyway, the thing I probably enjoyed most about this film is that religious believers weren’t depicted as unthinking idiots blown away by the skepticism of those who do not believe.
Blake, how would you recommend this to readers who aren’t normally horror buffs?
Blake: It’s mostly tension by way of dialogue. By the end, we get some gore, but it’s largely muted. Really, it’s a master class in how dialogue can be used effectively to create tension. Also, Hugh Grant! Also, if you’re a fan of Dante.
Ian: Ha! “Needless to say, if you loved The Inferno, you’ll love the single nonspoken reference to it in this film, which otherwise bears no allusions, echoes, or references to it.”
Thanks for joining us to watch Heretic! Spookiness abounds, and you better believe there’s more in gore next week when we watch Brotherhood of the Wolf. Until then, stay spooky!
