Why holy horror can be a hit with moviegoers

(AP) — In the new horror film “Heretics”, Hugh Grant plays a diabolical religious skeptic who traps two frightened missionaries in his house and tries to violently shake their faith.

What starts out more like a lecture on religious studies slowly turns into a bloody escape room for the two door-knocking members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, underscoring how well-suited religion can be to terrifying and entertaining thrill-seeking moviegoers.

“I think it’s a fascinating religious horror because it raises questions about the institution of religion, the patriarchy of religion,” said Stacey Abbott, a film professor at Northumbria University in Newcastle, England, whose research interests include horror, vampires, and zombies.

“But it also questions the nature of faith and confronts the audience with a debate about choice, faith and free will.”

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Horror has had a decades-long attraction to religion and Christianity, especially in the United States, with 1970’s “The Exorcist” and “The Omen” being prime examples. Beyond the jump scares, the supernatural elements of horror and its sublime nature pair easily with faith and spirituality — and religion’s exploration of big existential questions, Abbott said. Horror is subversive. Taboos in real life and cultural concerns are fair game.

“It’s a rich canvas for social criticism, and it can also be a space for asserting traditional values,” Abbott said in an email.

Death, demons and other tough subjects, religion and horror deals

Religions and horror tackle similar questions about what it means to be human — how people relate to each other and the world, said Brandon Grafius, a professor of biblical studies at Ecumenical Theological Seminary in Detroit and an expert on Christianity and horror.

“So much of religion is about how we grapple with the reality of death. Helping us make sense even in the face of that reality,” Grafius said. “Horror really serves the same process, as a way of reflecting on death.”

Not only does Christianity translate well to American audiences, it has a lot of raw material for filmmakers to work with, he said.

“Christianity emerged as a strongly dualistic religion, where forces are either good or evil,” Grafius said. “Although the United States is moving away from being a nation dominated by Christianity, we still have that dualism deep in our bones.”

Among recent religion-themed horror films, “The Conjuring” series, including “The Nun” films, feature paranormal investigators battling demons, Abbott said, while “The First Omen” and “Immaculate” offer critiques of patriarchal attempts to control women’s bodies.

“These films seem to be a direct response to many of the debates going on in the US these days,” Abbott wrote in his email. “These different approaches to religion in horror illustrate the way the genre engages in a very lively debate around religion or, more specifically, how religion is used to assert control (which is what ‘Heretics’ is about).”

Grant, who plays Mr. Reed in the new film, told The Associated Press that he shared some of his “heretical” character’s skepticism, though not necessarily from a religious perspective:

“There’s a part of me—probably a not very attractive part of me—that likes to smash people’s idols. Anyone I feel is a little too smug or too pretentious, I don’t like to see that. I like to just separate them a little.”

Horror can be challenging. It acts as a dark mirror that can reveal things that people don’t want to admit and fear they won’t face, said the Rev. Ryan Duns, a Jesuit priest and director of theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee.

If done well, both religion and horror are unsettling, he said.

“Religion, when it disturbs, asks us if I am living up to the person I have been called to be, or am I complicit in systems of violence, oppression, injustice, going with the status quo,” said Duns, who wrote “Theology of Horror” and also teaches a course on it. “In the horror film, the monster threatens normality—threatens to destroy our status quo.”

But they deviate from there. In horror there is no way around it, Duns said. He pointed out that defeating a movie’s monster doesn’t prevent sequels, hence “Jaws 2,” “Terrifier 3,” “Return of the Killer Tomatoes” and more.

In Christianity, it is Jesus and the Gospels that threaten the status quo, but they offer hope and a way out, he said.

Ti West weaves religion into the narrative of her new film, “MaXXXine,” a horror film about a grown-up movie star trying to break into mainstream movies. West, who also wrote and directed “The Sacrament,” a horror film inspired by the 1978 Jonestown massacre, said he doesn’t actively set out to tell stories with prominent religious narratives, but religion can be ripe for mining.

“It kind of depends on the story,” West said, “Anything with morals wrapped up in it, they kind of go hand in hand at times. And it’s like religion is such a big part of every culture everywhere that sometimes I have desire for it is such a big part of life that gets put aside in movies.”

When religion works in horror – and when it doesn’t

In addition to bad storytelling, the mix of horror and religion can go awry if the film is intended to offend the believers of a particular faith, said Lisa Morton, an award-winning horror author whose written books on Halloween and paranormal history.

But it can really go right. Morton’s all-time favorite movie is “The Exorcist,” a holy horror icon and a top example of the genre. “The Omen” followed it.

“All the modern bloodlines kind of trace back through those two,” Morton said. “It’s interesting how they keep getting rebooted over and over again.”

Abbott agrees that religion should be portrayed respectfully, just as she expects accuracy and respect for science in film, although not every detail needs to be perfect. “But some horror movies, like exorcism movies, are built on the fact that they draw on real rituals and then take them to a more extreme conclusion,” she said.

Osgood Perkins, who wrote and directed “Longlegs,” a horror film about an occult serial killer, invented the religious material in his film, piecing together what felt right from his imagination and real life.

“I’m just making it up,” Perkins said. “But then you get something like the Bible verse and you think, ‘Wow, this is really rich’. Animals coming out of the sea with heads and horns and crowns and things like that, I didn’t invent.”

For Duns, an accurate depiction of religious rituals and symbols—without overdoing it—can add weight to a scene.

“The rituals of the churches have been stylized and lived out for centuries,” Duns said. “When film is silly or sloppy with it, the power of gesture and the power of symbols is lost.”

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AP reporter Krysta Fauria contributed to this report.

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