Heretic 2024

The film opens with two Mormon missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), sitting and discussing pornography since Paxton watched a video and felt bad for the actress in it. They go around town trying to talk to others for conversion. On the street, they spot some teenage girls, who play a mean prank on Paxton by pulling down her skirt to see if she has “magic underwear”. Paxton also talks to Barnes about how people mock their religion, but Barnes doesn’t seem too bothered by it.

As it starts to rain heavily, the ladies arrive at the home of an Englishman named Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant). They start to discuss their business with him, and he invites them inside. They only agree when he says that his wife is in the house, as another woman must be present for them to enter. Reed tells them that his wife is baking a blueberry pie.

Reed sits the girls down and chats with them on subjects such as religion, as he has done his own study on Mormonism and owns a copy of the Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith. Other topics discussed include how Sister Barnes’s father passed away from ALS, and how they specifically do not discuss Taco Bell. The discussion grows quietly tense when Reed makes a comment about Barnes’s father, as well as the nature of their religion, before he exits the room. Barnes then looks down at the candle that Reed placed on the table, which is the source of the blueberry pie smell.

Barnes and Paxton get uncomfortable and try to find a quiet way to leave the house as they deduce that there is no Mrs. Reed. The front door ends up locked, and they have no signal to call for help. They start to make their way toward the back of the house, only to find Reed in his study, which contains an extensive library. While they try to politely excuse themselves, Reed tells them there are two doors through which they can exit, marking on with “belief” and the other with “disbelief”.

Reed then appears to pull out something sinister, only for it to be an original version of the Monopoly board game. He then begins a lecture to the missionaries about how it derived from a previous board game called The Landlord’s Game. Reed also applies this to the song “The Air That I Breathe” by The Hollies, which Barnes and Paxton have claimed to not have heard before that night, but he knows that they are familiar with the song “Creep” by Radiohead since that song used elements from the former song. This is all to establish Reed’s belief that all the world’s religions are flawed and derived from the “one true religion”. He gives the missionaries another chance to go through the doors, based on their actual beliefs in God. Barnes argues against Reed’s claims before she and Paxton go through the “belief” door.

The door leads Barnes and Paxton down into an underground dungeon with no way out. Reed then talks to the ladies through a speaker as a decrepit old woman, referred to as a “Prophet” (Elle Young), walks in holding a messy blueberry pie. Reed informs Barnes and Paxton that they are about to witness a miracle. He says that the pie has been poisoned, and that the woman will be resurrected moments later.

Elder Kennedy (Topher Grace) of the Mormon church has noticed that Barnes and Paxton never signed themselves back in, so he goes out to the houses that they would have visited to ask around for them. When he arrives at Reed’s house, Barnes and Paxton try to get his attention by screaming and then by getting some matches to try and start a fire, but Kennedy leaves before they can do anything. Not long after, the ladies notice that the Prophet has seemingly been resurrected, as she begins muttering a description of the afterlife.

Reed comes down to the dungeon to boast about the “miracle”, and that he is offering to sacrifice one of them and bring them back, but Barnes says she knows that this was no miracle. She tells Reed why she and Paxton don’t talk about Taco Bell, which is because Barnes was clinically dead after an e. coli infection, and her near-death experience was similar to what the Prophet was describing. Before she can go on, Reed slashes her throat, claiming that she will come back.

After a few minutes, Reed determines that Barnes cannot be brought back. He cuts into her arm and finds a metal pin inside, claiming it to be a microchip and that Sister Barnes was supposedly never real, nor is any of Paxton’s reality. Paxton then tells Reed she knows that the metal item was a contraceptive device, and she knows what he really did. The first Prophet really did die, but the resurrected one was another woman who was given a script by Reed to describe the afterlife. What Reed did not count on was the woman telling the ladies that “it’s not real”. The second woman switched the dead one with herself while the girls tried to get Kennedy’s attention.

Paxton then goes down the trap door where the dead woman would be, which Reed lets her enter so that Paxton can see the “one true religion”. Paxton finds many other women in cages and comes to the conclusion that, in Reed’s mind, the “one true religion” is control, especially since he tried to make them kill themselves and believe it was their idea. As Reed tries to taunt Paxton, she stabs him in the throat with a hidden letter opener that Barnes gave her for protection. She runs for an exit but doesn’t make it far before Reed stabs her in the gut with the letter opener. As they start to bleed out, Reed says to pray for them. Paxton says praying doesn’t really do anything and is more of just an act of kindness. She starts to pray, while Reed crawls over to try and finish her, but he gets whacked in the head with a plank of wood with nails sticking out, killing him. The blow was dealt by Sister Barnes, who lives long enough before collapsing into Paxton’s arms.

Paxton finally manages to find a window to escape from as it is now morning and the storm has cleared up. She sees a butterfly land on her hand, as she had earlier stated that she would like to come back as one when she dies. Paxton looks away for a second, and the butterfly disappears.