Recencies van critici

There have been hundreds of horror flicks about religious zealots using violence to get their way, but this clever flick is more of a mind game, a study in not just what stories we're told but who has been telling them to us.

Grant is clearly having a lot of fun in “Heretic,” and it’s enjoyable watching him go hard here with cold, predatory eyes and a smile that turns from uneasily friendly to straight-up fiendish... Even as the movie dribbles into disappointing familiarity, the pleasure he exudes as an irredeemable fiend is plenty seductive.

Wringing the maximum mileage from its claustrophobic location, Heretic merrily spins us around and steers us towards darkness. It’s a tense, tight fairground ride of a film.

Heretic is gruesome and bizarre and preposterous, the third aspect made palatable by Grant’s dapper performance of evil.

Heretic increasingly feels synced with the smug grandstanding of its antagonist. It swaps out the wry, creepy humour of its opening scenes for unconvincing Grand Guignol and subordinates dramatic logic to a set of plot gimmicks whose blatant shamelessness is ultimately unforgivable, whether for an audience or some hovering higher power.

Perhaps a bit more ambiguity in Heretic’s ending would have made the film soar into the heavens, but it still offers up a stimulating portrait of a hell forged through the rigidity of one person’s deranged view of the world.

“Heretic” shows progression and confidence, especially in its reliance on wall-to-wall dialog and successfully staging a film in near real-time. It is not an easy feat to pull off and seldom attempted for that reason. “Heretic” will be a different kind of horror film than the monthly gorefests that Hollywood pumps out like clockwork. Audiences that give it a chance will be rewarded with something halfway intriguing and novel.

The relationship between Paxton, Barnes and Mr. Reed remains the most absorbing thread throughout Heretic. Even when the screenplay heads into deflating territory — trading potential acerbity for more neutral conclusions — their cat-and-mouse game keeps us curious and faithful.

Heretic has been crafted with expert care, and the strong performances help carry this dialogue-driven thriller. The problem is that the film’s ideas are not particularly stimulating... Grant is skilfull in his delivery, but his commentary is hardly novel and his larger observations about society don’t seem nearly as profound as the writer-directors believe. And because so much of this intimate piece relies on the sizzle of the exchanges between this suburban monster and these sheltered missionaries, Heretic fails to enrapture (or horrify).

It’s a fascinating test of patience for many Friday night horror fans, given how long the film takes for anything truly, viscerally nasty to happen, and when it does, it’s nasty enough to jolt us... As grim as some of the imagery might get, Beck and Woods are still most focused on ensuring we have a good fun time... Heretic might not be good clean fun but Grant makes it worth us getting dirty.