Most of the pre-release attention for Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ A24 horror movie Heretic has focused on its perfect use of Hugh Grant as a polite predator. As seen in the film’s trailer, Grant plays antagonist Mr. Reed, a seemingly polite man who invites two Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) into his house for a conversation, then starts to reveal his far more inimical intentions.
The latest step in Grant’s evolution from rom-com lead to frequent smirking villain is more intellectualized than most: As Mr. Reed, Grant hides sadism under a veneer of politesse and a series of historical and cultural lectures, clearly designed to get viewers talking and thinking while still feeling the intense danger surrounding the two young leads.
Woods and Beck — the screenwriters behind A Quiet Place, and directors of Haunt and 65, the Adam Driver-versus-dinosaurs movie — seem to be bringing their latest movie to theaters at a difficult time on Nov. 8, when Americans are likely distracted by the results of the 2024 presidential election on Nov. 5. But as it turns out, Heretic is as much a political movie for this exact moment as it is a horror feature about two women trying to survive an unpredictable, dangerous man. Polygon sat down with the writer-directors ahead of the film’s release to talk religion and politics — usually contentious, dangerous topics, but as they see it, particularly important ones at the moment.
This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
Polygon: The idea of young women being contained and controlled by a religious fanatic who thinks his ideas and actions are reasonable feels like a commentary on present-day America. Did you think of Heretic as speaking to the current political moment?
Scott Beck: Absolutely. I mean, I think religion and politics are so intertwined — in the last eight years, we see the way that religious beliefs controls certain aspects of our laws in the United States. What the movie latently is addressing is this idea of control: organizations that exert control over the eons since religion began.
Religion can be very beautiful when it’s a personal journey. I think there are also aspects where it can be very dangerous, and it can really dictate and overstep, [which we’ve seen] too many times throughout culture and civilization. And so I think certainly the politics is there. […]
That’s probably another movie, a discourse about politics. You could have Mr. Reed go on and on and kind of break apart why things are the way they are, [with viewers] probably nodding, as dangerous as he might seem. But it is something that feels to us very American, in terms of the combination of those two, and religion overstepping its boundaries.
Was making the choice to have it be a couple of female Mormon missionaries rather than male part of the dynamic of exploring that problem of control?
Bryan Woods: There is a subtextual layer running through Heretic about the dynamic between men and women in certain institutions, and in religion at large. Reed’s not literally saying this, but he might as well be talking about how the pope is always a man. He might as well be talking about how in religious history, Eve was created from Adam’s rib. A lot of dated, sexist ideas are prevalent in some of the ancient religions. Men wrote the holy books and recorded that history, so it’s passed from man to man to man. I hope the movie is scratching at that.
We’re trying to embody that conversation by putting two young females in conversation with Mr. Reed, and watching him underestimate them, seeing how intelligent [they are], and also seeing the depth that they have that maybe we don’t expect. That was of interest to us.
At the Q&A after Heretic screened at Fantastic Fest, you said your cast shared their own experiences with religion via a series of discussions that ended up having an effect on the movie. What did you learn from them?
Beck: At large, the conversations stemmed from, “OK, how were you raised? Were you raised non-practicing? Were you raised in a certain sect of religion?” And it became self-reflective: “OK, but how does that intersect with why we believe what we believe as adults?”
Myself, being raised in Iowa, going to a Christian denomination church — that was something that I just did every single Sunday. And it wasn’t until my teenage years that I started investigating, I was raised in this, but what do I actually believe? It was a question that had not occurred to me up until that point.
Part of the conversations we had on set was, “How does your belief system — or the larger aspect of religion — intersect with how you interact with other people in the world? How do politics and the idea of religion intersect in ways that can be controlling the discourse, or laws, or the autonomy otherwise one should have in their life?”
It was constantly a topic of a conversation. Every time the script was submitted for consideration to a cast member or to a crew member, the conversation immediately started off with, “OK, well, this is fascinating, and I relate to this. This is my relationship with faith, or my non-relationship with faith.” And it always just became a living, breathing conversation that has permeated up into this release of this film as we hear from people in the audience.
Woods: When you make a story — our new ambition is to try to make it as personal as possible for everyone involved. We were able to cast Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East — who were both raised Mormon, in Mormon families — and have that representation on set with us as we were telling this story. They checked us to make sure the characters felt real and authentic.
Being able to use Sophie Thatcher to cover Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” for the end credits is another example of injecting that truth. Talking with Hugh about his feelings about atheism, and being a part of — this is maybe too extreme of a comparison, but being a part of the lineage of British atheist thinkers — those [people] were inspirations for this role, people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. I think Hugh might’ve even met some of them in his life overseas. And just being able to draw on everybody’s personal experiences to constantly inform the dialogue and the truth of the scenarios that we were setting up was instrumental to the film.
Did you actually end up adjusting the script to meet these different perspectives? Or was it more about nuance they brought to the performances?
Woods: I think it’s a nuance in the performance and line deliveries and staging. It’s not like, “Oh, this scene came from that conversation.” But for sure, dialogue choices [came from] talking with Chloe and Sophie.
In the basement, when things start to get really tense in Heretic — there was a moment where I remember Chloe telling us from her knowledge of Mormon missionaries, “It’s a big deal when they separate. You never let your sister out of your sight. She would always have to have an eye line.”
And playing that tension in the scene when they’re in the basement, and one of them runs up the stairs, and the other one has to stay toward the speaking tube — emotionally, they played it differently than Scott and I ever imagined, because we didn’t know that specific rule. So [we learned] lots of things that informed the piece, and hopefully kept it honest throughout.
Scott mentioned how his own experience with religion affected the film. Brian, do you have similar stories?
Woods: Scott and I are so similar — we’ve known each other since we were 11, so we’ve kind of been on a similar religious journey, which is ever-evolving. There’s a line in the movie where Reed says, “The more you know, the less you know.” And I think that’s a feeling Scott and I share with Mr. Reed: You grow up feeling one way, and then you meet friends and family, and you marry into other families, and everybody has their different ideas.
And also, just our nature as screenwriters — we have empathy for people of different walks of life. We’re always trying to put ourselves in their shoes, and imagine what it would be like to think and feel certain ways. So the older we get — I think we’ve embraced the journey and the mystery of not knowing what happens when we all die. I think that’s something that’s kind of become beautiful. But for a long time, it was a fear of ours, and I think it’s a fear of everybody’s. I think it’s a natural fear to have, what happens when we die. It’s a very scary idea.
And there’s an argument to be made that there are so many religions in the world because people are so afraid of death, and religion can be an antidote to that terror that we all have.