Reviews
‘Heretic’ Review – Hugh Grant Steals A24’s Verbose Theological Thriller [TIFF]
It turns out that the effervescent but neurotic wit and charm that made Hugh Grant an enduring romantic lead actor translates quite well to horror. His disarming villain, an impish type who delights in psychological and theological warfare, elevates Heretic, the latest from A24 and writer/director duo Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (65, Haunt). The self-contained chamber piece gets hung up in its basic lecture on religion, but the smart casting, powerhouse performances, and an infectious sense of humor ensure that it remains engaging.
Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes (The Boogeyman‘s Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) ponder typical teenage things, like condom sizes or whether they fit in with their peers, before they continue to work their way down the assigned list of potential converts. That brings them to the door of Mr. Reed (Grant), a warm, neighborly type who invites the pair inside just as a storm arrives. With promises of homemade pie and a safe female presence, the girls reluctantly enter, unaware that Mr. Reed has a devious, dangerous game in mind to test their faith.
Heretic hinges upon its performances. The elegantly simple, stageplay-like setup strips quickly trap Barnes and Paxton in Mr. Reed’s small, cozy parlor, where both parties engage in rapid-fire, dialogue-heavy exchanges of life and faith. Mr. Reed bides his time regaling his captive audience by playing devil’s advocate at first, gently testing the boundaries of their beliefs before luring them further into darkness. Grant makes easy work of chewing scenery; this is an unflappable, cunning foe excited by the savviness of his vulnerable prey. The more they push back, the more amused he becomes, wrapping the audience around his fingers even as he spews endless monologues of entry-level theology, complete with pop culture examples for even easier digestion. The use of Monopoly as a visual representation earns a hearty chuckle, even if it is a bit too obvious a metaphor for Grant’s wily game-playing puppeteer.
Thatcher and East make for formidable opponents, at least when it comes to the battle of wits. They both instill rooting interest, even when making obvious missteps toward doom. That speaks to their screen presence and natural charisma, considering the verbose ideological ideas explored at length aren’t all that profound or stimulating. It’s not the twisted game of chess that’s interesting here, but rather the moves each player makes and why.
Philip Messina’s production design also works in the film’s favor. Mr. Reed’s deceptive little home reveals itself piecemeal, peeling back an insidious house of horrors befitting of the gamemaster. The darkly lit corridors and dingy, fraying corners add depth and dimension to a surface-level narrative, lending foreboding gloom and twisty surprises. In a dialogue-focused feature that opts for dread over scares, Messina’s production design does the heavy lifting for the horror.
That’s not to say that Heretic doesn’t have a few surprises in store, but those moments are fleeting and undermined by its superficial societal and religious observations. Belief or disbelief becomes a moot question by the film’s end, and logic stumbles the further Beck and Woods corner their characters. Their claustrophobic cat-and-mouse game is reliant on its fiery exchanges; it’s a verbal sparring match of a movie. While those exchanges are never as profound as they claim, the three performers manage to keep you in their grip all the same. Heretic is a movie that’s ultimately carried on the back of its villain, and Grant’s daffy, amused portrayal of Mr. Reed might be enough to make you a convert.
Heretic made its world premiere at TIFF and releases in theaters on November 15, 2024.
Franchise callbacks and connective tissue between films are aplenty in Sébastien Vaniček’s Evil Dead Burn, including a sense of humor. Yet the laughs feel oddly placed in the most dour entry yet, with its sobering allegory for domestic abuse. Ambitious swings and inspired sequences unleash thrilling carnage that satisfy, but it all unravels by its clumsy final showdown.
Alice (Souheila Yacoub) is already a survivor before the arrival of Deadites. She’s suffered domestic abuse and violence at the hands of her husband, Will Price (George Pullar), and finally sees reprieve when the lakeside Deadite that bookended Evil Dead Rise causes his death. It’s a calculated move by the undead; they’re in search of a certain Kandarian dagger that happens to be a Price family heirloom. So, Alice’s grieving with her in-laws becomes a bloodbath as she’s forced to confront literal and metaphorical demons, courtesy of the Necronomicon.
Vaniček, who co-wrote the script with Florent Bernard, presents a rather rotten family tree before any demonic activity. Will is, after all, his parents’ son, and mom and dad are a nasty piece of work. Erroll Shand manages to top his skin-crawling villain from Mārama as Price patriarch Edgar, a volatile vision of toxicity and control. His wife, Susan (Tandi Wright), reveals herself to be even more vile, doling out cruel barbs that indicate she’s quite comfortable with her husband and eldest son’s penchant for violence.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree; flickers of ignorance and bigotry occasionally cut through Grandma’s (Maude Davey) dementia-addled mind. The exception to this family’s rot is with timid youngest son Joseph (Hunter Doohan) and his girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan), though he’s too browbeaten to protect anyone from the Prices’ wrath. His cowardice is revealed to be a different form of toxicity, though, a byproduct of the kind of fruit this family tree bears. Which is to say that Evil Dead Burn may be the first in the franchise to operate on such a palpable degree of hate. It’s hard to feel fear when you actively despise the majority of these characters and root for their demise.
The good news is that Vaniček delivers on that front. Adhering to the formula, the family members perish one by one in inventive ways. Including the poor family pup, though his Deadite form doesn’t contribute much to the chaos. It’s the ingenious set pieces and demonic sequences that stand out in Evil Dead Burn, calling Vaniček’s nerve-fraying Infested to mind. An early sequence involving a moving car, one that sees multiple bodies fighting for life or death and utilizing whatever weapon they can, is worth the ticket price alone. A later sequence that sees Alice crawling away as an all-out brawl breaks out around her in a long, continuous take also adds thrilling personality.
Evil Dead Burn sags dramatically between these sequences, though, forcing us to sit through more vitriol from vicious in-laws with only contact lenses and wounds to distinguish them from human or demon. The somber tone is matched by a flat gray palette evocative of ash, made more literal by the falling of snow. The cold, flat aesthetic also diminishes some of the horror’s visceral impact. It all builds to a rather dismal climax that introduces a shoddy CG monstrosity that makes Alice’s demons made of burnt flesh.
In a film series that has, thus far, maintained fierce commitment to practical effects, the clunky final boss of demons here winds up a huge disappointment. At least the filmmaker commits fully to the Burn part of the title, forgoing the blood-drenched finales of the previous two films to deliver something a bit fresher.
It’s so heavy-handed in its domestic violence theme that subtext is just text, which in turn clashes with the upbeat splatstick fan service bits. A mid-credit scene aims to bring the laughs, but the post-credit scene is so egregious in its fan service that it reads desperate and feels shoehorned in just to remind fans how much we love this particular character.
Vaniček most certainly understands the assignment when it comes to delivering gruesome freakouts and brutal carnage. It’s everything else around it that largely frustrates. Yacoub is a winsome final girl who’s already been battered before the events of the film, then we’re forced to watch the rest of the family pile on in even worse ways.
It’s the type of bleak that’s at constant odds with the Evil Dead formula and callbacks, making for a tonally uneven vision of domestic abuse. It makes you miss when the ancient evil in this series didn’t need a trauma metaphor to terrorize. That’s what the demons are for.
Evil Dead Burn releases in theaters on July 10.
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