Heretic is a new horror movie that stars Hugh Grant in his most villainous role to date. Here’s what nefarious plans his character has for the Mormon Sisters who knock on his door, plus how that plays out.
Heretic has been receiving rave reviews on the festival circuit, with Hugh Grant singled out for his masterful performance as the mysterious Mr. Reed.
We caught the movie at Fantastic Fest, where we wrote in our Heretic review that “it largely works because of Hugh Grant’s towering performance, through which Mr. Reed manages to be likable, creepy, and terrifying, sometimes in the space of just a few words.”
The movie is in UK cinemas now, so here’s an explanation of what Mr. Reed is up to, and if he succeeds. So SPOILERS ahead.
Mr. Reed’s plan in Heretic explained
Heretic starts with two young Mormons – Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister East (Chloe Paxton) – knocking on the door of someone who has expressed interest in learning about the Church of Latter Day Saints.
Mr. Reed is the seeming gentleman who answers said door, inviting the women in, while insisting that his wife is in the next room baking pie.
The girls enter, and set about educating Reed in the ways of their church. But he has questions of his own that are designed to challenge their beliefs, and a friendly conversation about religion quickly turns into a tense theological debate.
It soon becomes clear that there’s no wife out back, and the women are locked in Mr. Reed’s house, ostensibly so he can prove a point: that the one true religion is control. And their captor soon turns to violence to make that point.
Do Sister Barnes and Sister East survive Heretic?
Only Sister Paxton survives the events of Heretic, with Sister Barnes dying in Mr Reed’s basement.
While endeavoring to test her faith, via statements like, “I can show you God, if you’re willing to die,” Mr. Reed stabs Sister Barnes, leaving her for dead.
Meanwhile, Sister Paxton finds multiple women chained up in cages; an example of Reed exerting control. But he has less success with her, as Paxton stabs Reed before trying to escape from his house of horrors.
But it’s a maze down there, and Reed catches up with Paxton. He’s slowly dying from his neck wound, and as he crawls over to Paxton, he somewhat ironically asks her to pray for him. She obliges, giving him an opportunity to kill her – but before he can stick his knife in her throat, Barnes miraculously awakens and smashes him over the head with a bat full of nails.
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Her resurrection is short-lived, as she dies immediately after. Paxton escapes, climbing out of a window into the cold light of day and running through the snow. She stops to catch her breath, and a butterfly lands on her finger. It flies away, leaving her alone, but importantly, alive.
Did Sister Barnes come back to life?
No, Sister Barnes didn’t die and come back to life. While it appeared she’d bled out and passed away after Mr Reed slit her throat, she was still alive (only just).
It’s tempting to think she somehow resurrected herself, given what happens earlier in the film. When they go into the basement, Mr Reed forces them to witness a “miracle”: a captive woman who eats a poisoned pie, dies, and then comes back to life.
It turns out that Mr Reed had simply switched the bodies, and he was just trying to make Barnes and Paxton believe him to illustrate his doctrine of control. There’s nothing supernatural going on with Barnes – she was on the brink of death, but summoned all of her remaining energy to save Paxton before slipping away.
What did the butterfly mean?
The butterfly on Paxton’s finger was a nod to one of Mr Reed’s scenes earlier in Heretic, where he outlined the theory of the “butterfly dream.”
Chuang Tzu, a philosopher in ancient China, once dreamt that he was a butterfly “flying around from flower to flower and while he was dreaming he felt free, blown about by the breeze hither and thither,” as the Philosophy Foundation explains.
“He was quite sure that he was a butterfly. But when he awoke he realized that he had just been dreaming, and that he was really Chuang Tzu dreaming he was a butterfly. But then Chuang Tzu asked himself the following question: ‘Was I Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly or am I now really a butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang Tzu?’
When Paxton first arrived in Mr Reed’s house, she also mentioned that she’d like to be reincarnated as a butterfly, and she’d spend her time flying around and landing on the hands of those she’d loved.
When the butterfly sits on her finger, it’s a grace note on how the events of the movie may have impacted her faith in God and the futility of existence; it could be Barnes’ reincarnated spirit, or it might just be a butterfly.
Heretic is in UK cinemas now, and hits US screens next Friday (November 8, 2024). For more scary stuff, check out our list of the best horror movies of all time, plus details of every Stephen King movie coming out in 2025.
