During an interview with Variety about their latest venture, Heretic, the writer-director duo Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (who rose to prominence for penning A Quiet Place [2018]), the pair discussed their decision to include a credit-message that said that no generative AI was used in the making of the film. “We have no illusions that when people watch ‘Heretic’ they’re going to go, ‘Wait, did they use generative AI?’,” Woods says, going on to stress the risk posed by generative AI in film: eroding worker protections; subverting fair use; copyright abuse; and deep fakes, to name a few. The benevolent dictums come a bit late in the interview, as if to shift focus away from an inadvertent admission.
Why, then, were Woods and Beck concerned that viewers of their new film would mistake their work for AI-generated material? The film follows a familiar-feeling premise, borrowing its structure from escape-oriented thrillers like Cube (1997), House on Haunted Hill (1999), Saw (2004), and The Belko Experiment (2016) — fun genre B-sides, no doubt, but not exactly brimming with substance — while training its content on the more horrific potentialities of religion; or in this case, a lack thereof. Specifically, the film sees Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher), two young members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, set out for a day of good ol’ proselytizing; a day, it is implied, not unlike many others, as the pair quickly become frustrated with the apathy — often veering toward aggression — shown to them (and God’s message) by strangers of the town.
Their final stop for the day is the home of Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant), a charming, if quirky, Mr. Rogers-type who insists they take shelter from an impending storm inside his house: there will be blueberry pie, he assures them, and also — per the rules of their church — his wife, in order to chaperone their exchange. No wife appears, however, and despite the obvious doubts this ignites in the minds of Paxton and Barnes, they continue in a dialogue with Reed that he soon overtakes with his seemingly deep knowledge of various world religions, and his eclectic references to Voltaire, Radiohead, Lana Del Rey, Monopoly, and Taco Bell.
The film, nearly two hours in length, proceeds with the rhythm of a progressive rock song, repeating shots (a closeup of Grant’s charming grin) and sounds (the ticking of Reed’s door-timer) in an exposition of rising potential that walks around the edges of violence, until its various elements and set pieces become so chaotic that they beckon that violence be released. Reed’s contention, or rather his position, is admitted in the film’s title, though it is not made clear in dialogue until the film’s midway point: that is, that all organized religions are a farce — the opiate of the masses, as a relatively well-known thinker once said — and that the only true religion, the one that Reed has come to know, is the religion of control.
By the time the film’s tension begins to unravel, it can’t be contained, unspooling down into the depths of Mr. Reed’s dungeon-like basement. There, Reed introduces Paxton and Barnes to a near-corpse whom he claims to be a prophet; after killing the prophet with laced blueberry pie, he says she will be resurrected, a proposition met with varying degrees of belief by the young missionaries. A later hiccup in Reed’s plans sees him committing another brash murder, the consequences of which find him ranting about simulation theory with the diction and conviction of a pre-teen Redditor.
And it’s here that we locate Heretic’s essential failure: the film is a fairly rote genre picture masquerading (in part because of A24’s marketing) as a heady horror dialectic about religion. Perhaps this is why Beck and Woods feared viewers would think the film is, at least in part, an output of generative AI: its dialogue is at best uninspired and at worst brazenly cliched, and unlike other horror films that are similarly restricted in form, content, and setting, the unimpressive and insubstantial dialogue of Heretic is supposed to function as its centerpiece, instead of, say, its production design, coloring, make-up, or practical effects.
Grant is Heretic’s one shining light, its almost-savior, and Beck and Woods do an exceptional job of appropriating his natural charm and dialing it up to such an intense personability that it becomes creepy and uncanny. Still, despite the tonal boon his eerie affability lends the film, Grant is simply not enough to help transcend its self-imposed borders, which are as predictable as they are forced. If Heretic is meant to be a bulwark of originality in the face of the incoming wave of generative AI, then Woods and Beck are giving us plenty of reason indeed to be scared.
DIRECTOR: Scott Beck & Bryan Woods; CAST: Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East, Topher Grace; DISTRIBUTOR: A24; IN THEATERS: November 8; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 51 min.
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