REVIEW:
Heretic had the makings of a pretty cool movie. All the pieces were there. The story of two girls who went to visit one older man at his home, only to learn of his deep, dark hidden secrets, had all the potential in the world. Especially for a horror movie. Between the single setting, the small size of the house, and the less is more approach, things really seemed to be on track in the first half, And then they sort of spiraled out of control in the second.
Let’s put it this way… the first half of the movie is pretty much all set in a single room. It’s the living room to Mr Reed (Hugh Grant’s,) house, and for these two girls, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton, they go inside the house only when Mr. Reed tells them that his wife is at home baking an apple pie.
Things get creepier, more and more, as the girls keep asking to see the wife and Mr. Reed tells them that she’s being shy. Still, the girls smell the apple pie and so they believe that the wife is indeed at home working on it. And they engage in conversation with Mr. Reed, sitting across from him with a coffee table in between them, as he pokes and prods at their religious beliefs and why they are so certain of them.
The best moment in the movie is also one of the simplest. It takes place over a candle that one of the girls turns to reveal something. It’s such a small moment, with us hearing the sound of the candle being dragged across the table, that it’s actually pretty brilliant. If only this movie had more moments like that. Instead, it takes us to darker and deeper levels, without realizing that less is more. And it gets pretty extreme by the end, but not in a good way. Even Reed’s speech about Monopoly and how it has been ripped off time and again, much the same as how each of the major religions of the world are similar or another version of each other, is not nearly as interesting as it should have been. The other great moment, besides the candle, comes when you see a model of the house, and start to understand the layout of the structure, and where different doors lead. Only this shot happens so fast, that the movie doesn’t really give us enough time to take it in. And that’s pretty much the problem with the movie. It doesn’t understand that less is more, and that a slower, more deliberate pacing would have gone Bette here than the escalation we get in the second half, as if the movie is constantly trying to one-up itself, and actually losing the battle every time it tries.