Heretic Now

The horror of Heretic is that Mr. Reed is not wrong. That is the terror. He weaponizes logic. He forces the sisters to confront the inherent absurdity of choosing one belief system over another. And in doing so, he strips away the armor of their faith, leaving them raw and exposed.

Mr. Reed doesn't use a knife or a jumpsuit to terrorize his guests. He uses epistemology. In a stunning, centerpiece monologue, he lays out a diabolical flowchart of faith, comparing Christianity to a board game that has been copied so many times the instructions have become gibberish. He asks why their specific iteration of God—based on a translation of a translation of a text written decades after the fact—is the "true" one. Heretic

For those who have returned from that house, let’s talk about why Heretic has lingered in my mind like a half-remembered nightmare. The horror of Heretic is that Mr

If you haven't seen it yet, stop reading. Go in cold. Trust me. He weaponizes logic

Where Heretic could have been nihilistic and cruel, it earns a surprising amount of grace in its final moments. Without giving away the ending, the film pits two versions of faith against each other: the faith in doctrine (the rules) vs. the faith in people (the empathy).

We’ve seen plenty of horror movies about haunted houses, masked killers, and demonic possessions. But the most unsettling horror film in recent memory—Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ Heretic —isn’t about what goes bump in the night. It’s about what happens when two polite young missionaries knock on the wrong door and find themselves trapped inside a labyrinth of theological debate.