‘I feel like it was me’: how have Mormons reacted to Hugh Grant’s horror Heretic? | Horror movie

What is the only true religion? That’s one of several leading questions that Hugh Grant’s professor villain Mr. Reed starred in the new hit film Heretic, which turns investigations of faith into wickedly entertaining psychological horror.

Mr. Reed’s targets are, at least externally, representatives of religious certainty: two sister missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who knock on his door with the hope of converting him. Sister Barnes (Yellowjackets’ Sophie Thatcher), a convert from Philadelphia, is quieter, duller and naturally skeptical. Sister Paxton (Chloe East), raised Mormon in Utah, is more stereotypically chipper, polite and gullible. Both believe Mr. Reed—at least enough to step in and escape a downpour—when he says his wife is baking a pie in the other room and will soon join them; sister missionaries must not be alone with a man unless another woman is present.

At first, Mr. Reed seems enthusiastic and curious about their faith; he even has a dog-eared copy of the Book of Mormon. But the conversation quickly darkens as Mr. Reed diabolically pokes holes in Mormon doctrine and history, as well as most other organized religions, as a means of psychological destabilization, control, fear and ultimately violence – Heretic is, after all, a horror film, written and directed by A Quiet Place filmmakers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. The characters’ Mormonism serves as a gateway to a psychological thriller of faith, prodded and prodded by a madman with the demeanor of a demented religious scholar (and played against type with gusto by a never-better Grant). The film has, unsurprisingly, drawn the ire of the Mormon Church, which said in an official statement that it “promotes violence against women because of their faith” and “undermines the contributions of volunteers” that “go against the safety and well-being of our community.” .The church-owned Deseret News reviewed the film as “rejecting what believers find sacred”.

But for those raised in the Mormon Church, a modern American religion is often subject to outside fascination via true crime series, influencer-driven reality shows or satirical caricatures, the prospect of two sister missionaries being trapped in a dangerous situation, and the metaphor of doubt as a terrifying, infernal descent, felt all too real. The portrayal of Mormon missionaries was “one of the best I’ve seen,” said Lexi Seals-Johnson, who grew up in the church and went on to establish Lost & Found Cluba group for the female and genderqueer ex-religious community in Salt Lake City, which hosted its own heretical screening. “I know a lot of women who were on missions, including my wife, couldn’t even watch the trailer because of how eerily similar the first few scenes were.” While some phrasing “may have been a little off,” said Nicole Merritts of Salt Lake City, “the naivety of their young age, trying to stay positive, and the mix of optimistic and jaded personalities was a pretty accurate characterization.”

For Whitney Rose, a star of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City — which, along with The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, serves as a primary site of Utah’s fascination in pop culture — Heretic depicted exactly what I know missions to be. Rose, a member of a founding Mormon family who left the church, hosted one joint screening in Salt Lake with Whitney Leavitt of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, who is still faithful, playing at Mr. Reed’s belief/unbelief binary and prompts discussions about integrating doubt into one’s faith practice. For Rose, Barnes and Paxton’s naivety, politeness and vulnerability felt spot-on. “You’re sending 18-year-olds out into the world who have grown up in a bubble and shelter of Mormonism,” she said. “You grow up thinking one way your whole life and suddenly at 18 you have to go out and figure out how to be safe and invite people into a religion.”

Rose is one of many former devout Mormons who react strongly to the film, from Reddit threads dive into matters of faith and missionary security to TikToks expresses shock at the accuracy of small details—East’s Utah accent, the way Barnes frames her status as a convert (“Such a typical Utah Mormon response,” Merritts said), the way Barnes and Paxton tiptoe around their curiosity about sex in the opening scene in which Barnes framed his own brush with pornography as a lesson from God. “It’s such a missionary thing to do,” said Caroline Brammer, who was raised Mormon and saw the film in Austin, Texas.

In one of his many post-scripted speeches deconstructing religion, Mr. Reed quotes Gordon B. Hinckley, who served as president of the church from 1995 to 2008. “When I hear about Mormons in pop culture, they usually take a stab at Joseph Smith or Brigham Young, who were early prophets and easy to criticize,” Brammer said. “But I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone talk about Gordon B. Hinckley, who was my childhood prophet.” The quote was so specific — “I don’t even know how you’d look for it,” she said — that it prompted her to Google if the filmmakers were Mormon.

Beck and Woods are not; they first developed the idea for the film while working in Salt Lake and befriended many Mormons and former Mormon families. For research, they read not only the Book of Mormon, but the Koran, various atheist thinkers, and Nick Bostrom’s simulation argument, among other texts. They consulted with several Mormon friends on the script, along with “a consistent gut check of like, are we approaching things with empathy?” Beck said. “Do we actually embody what our knowledge of Mormon missionaries actually is? Do we make sure they don’t feel like caricatures? Are they authentic people? Which is always the goal when writing a screenplay, but it felt like there was a little more responsibility to it.”

Aspects of the dialogue, such as the sister missionaries admitting to each other that some of the songs in the Book of Mormon were funny, were taken from real conversations. “We’re taking a lot of the truth of what we knew from our friends and putting it in the mouths of these two missionaries because we feel that the portrayal of the LDS community, and missionaries in particular, are always caricatures,” Woods said. It also helps that both East and Thatcher were raised Mormon, which informed the characteristics of their performance.

Brammer compared the film favorably to the Hulu series Under the Banner of Heaven, a prestige TV adaptation of a book about murders by violent Mormon fundamentalists, which “sounded very clumsy” as “they never actually talked to anyone who was Mormon “. Heretic is “more focused on the reality that missionaries are just 19-, 20-year-old kids, and not all of them are as righteous as you’d imagine. A lot of them question things and go on missions of different reasons,” she said. And they’re kids — “they talk about stupid things like porn or sex.”

And in some cases move away from the church; several ex-Mormons noted that the terror of the film’s latter half (no spoilers!) offered a metaphor for the confusing deconstruction of belief system. “I appreciated that both subtle LDS nuances and a spectrum of beliefs were represented,” said Mae Warner of Salt Lake City. “In my own life, deconstructing religious beliefs felt offensive and not fully consensual. Heretical captures that experience both explicitly and metaphorically in such poignant ways.”

The film was “a pretty provocative portrayal of faith in general”, Seals-Johnson said. “It’s always jarring to hear details about the Mormon Church discussed in the mainstream media because so much of it is hush-hush.”

For Rose, while aspects of the film “validated my faith in knowing that we are held accountable for how we treat each other,” it resonated psychologically with her departure from the church. “I feel like it was me,” she said. “Obviously on a completely different journey, but the mental turmoil and the torment and the struggle I went through in my 20s to leave the church when I had my crisis of faith – that’s what it feels like. It feels so traumatic.”

Rose, like the others I spoke to, did not expect the truly devout to see the film, given the church’s public disapproval. “It would probably be considered not the right thing to do,” she said. But she wishes anyone of any faith would watch it, “for their own faith, and just for more understanding of why people leave”.