The Horrors of Disbelief

Finally getting some thoughts out about the movie "Heretic," a Mormon missionary cat-and-mouse thriller.

Spoiler alert: I’m diving into the movie Heretic, and if you haven’t seen it, you’ll probably want to watch first. It’s available to rent on Prime.

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In 2023, Mormon Prophet Russell M. Nelson infamously said the following: “The Apostle Paul prophesied that ‘in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.’ There is no end to the adversary’s deceptions. Please be prepared. Never take counsel from those who do not believe.”

I remember checking in with Mormon friends and family after I heard this specific talk, making sure we were on the same page. This is a little….nuts? I wrote. In Mormonism, there is already a stigma against “unbelievers,” especially those who have left the religion, but this was one of the first times in my short life that a prophet had so clearly given credence to an us vs. them fallacy.

I was reminded of Nelson’s talk when I saw Heretic, an A24 horror movie released in November 2024. I was really excited to see this film—it had Hugh Grant! Sister missionaries! “A game of cat and mouse”! The trailer showed a hooded figure lying on the floor, ladders going who knows where, naïve young missionaries who reminded me of myself more than a decade ago.

The first half of the film was so fun. We meet the missionaries, who are sitting on a park bench talking about porn. (This part felt unrealistic—fellow Mormons and post-Mormons…in what world?) We watch them go about their missionary work, lugging their bikes up many flights of stairs, talking with people on the street, working out their awkward relationship as two women who must always stay “within sight and sound” of each other for anywhere from six weeks to several months.

And then they show up at Hugh Grant’s door, ready to share the gospel with what seems to be a kind, older gentleman. He invites them in under the guise that his wife is home as well, making blueberry pie in the kitchen. They sit in his sparse and dimly lit living room, where he asks them increasingly uncomfortable questions about Mormonism, culminating in the one we’re all expecting: how do the missionaries reconcile polygamy? (Spoiler: we don’t!)

As Hugh Grant goes into the kitchen to ostensibly check on his wife and the blueberry pie, the missionaries discuss in low voices that they need to get out of there. Something doesn’t feel right. Well, it wouldn’t be a horror movie without some locked doors, right? The missionaries are eventually led into a back room, where Hugh Grant gives them a presentation on Christianity. He argues that all modern religion is just different iterations of Judaism and that Jesus is a character who shows up in many different forms throughout the world. Religion is just a story, he says.

The missionaries are forced to go into one of two doors, which are labeled “belief” and “disbelief,” and which ultimately lead to the same dungeon. (Aha—a metaphor.) Here’s where the plot kind of breaks down for me.

I started to realize—as I watched the missionaries encounter an old woman who eats a poisoned blueberry pie, dies, and then supposedly comes back to life—that the only way out of this mess, for the story to be satisfying, is for the missionaries to escape. And as the movie’s protagonists, I wanted them to escape. The story is layered, of course. It’s not just about religion. It’s about control. So, even though the missionaries were representative of “believers,” they were also representative of women in our broader patriarchal web, trapped and needing to escape from a man holding them down.

But their inevitable escape also inferred that “believers” prosper, and “unbelievers” are doomed. “Unbelievers” are the bad guys. Irrational, erratic, murderous beings. Hugh Grant’s character represented patriarchy and disbelief all at once. He’s trying to prove to the missionaries that religion is all about control, even while he’s relishing in the control he has over not only the sister missionaries, but also at least a dozen women freezing in cages in his cellar.

After a bunch of shenanigans, the film ends with one sister missionary dead on the ground, and another dying while Hugh Grant is approaching her to finish the job. The dead sister missionary turns out not to be dead, and she kills Hugh Grant with a board covered in nails. The dying sister missionary escapes after the dead sister missionary actually dies.

So, okay, on the one hand, the surviving missionary has overcome the patriarchy. Yay. On the other hand, she’s just left one version of control for another, because as far as we can tell, she goes on to live a Mormon life. (There are some people who believe she does die at the end, but it’s purposely vague.) On the third hand, “believers” have conquered, while the “unbeliever” has died in a dungeon of his own making.

It’s just…too many metaphors. And none of them actually feel fully fleshed out. From what I can gather, the producers and writers aren’t directly tied to the Mormon church, so I get that they’d be off about a few details. It can be fun to have a story that’s so open to interpretation, but this one felt like it wasn’t fully thought through. I think the key to a story being open to interpretation is that the writer still knows what they intended each detail to mean. Here, it doesn’t seem like the directors/producers/writers had a clear idea of what meant what.

And so, I think I’m left in the same position I started in. Thinking about that talk back from 2023, thinking about the way it makes me and other “unbelievers” the enemy, thinking about the way the media perpetuates the story of good vs. evil. What I liked about Heretic is that I found myself agreeing with Hugh Grant and the missionaries at different points throughout the film. I agree that religion is a story we’ve told ourselves to make our existence make sense! And I also agree that believing in something helps us maintain optimism in a flawed and often scary world. I just wish the ending of Heretic had reflected more of that nuance, instead of drawing similar black and white lines that I tired of when I was a Mormon member.

In Amanda Montell’s book Cult-ish, she lays out language techniques used by cult leaders and otherwise charismatic people to keep their followers in line. As a high demand religion, Mormonism can be cult-ish, especially when it employs an “us vs. them” mentality, one of the techniques Montell points out. I was told throughout my youth that the people outside of the Mormon church wanted to lead me astray, that I could really only trust people in my religion to tell me the truth, and that even reading something about the church written by an outside observer would be unhelpful to my faith. This “us vs. them” tactic only led to a more insular community, physically and mentally severing what could have been meaningful ties with people who thought differently than me.

I certainly don’t want to get too far into the idea that we need to listen to everyone who thinks differently than us. Not in this moment of political distress. But I do think, zooming in on Mormonism, it feels like a missed opportunity to cut off—and in Heretic’s case, villainize—the thoughts and opinions of loved ones who have decided to pursue a more authentic spiritual journey for themselves.

The doors labeled “belief” and “disbelief” in Heretic led to the same place, both down long, dark staircases into the unknown. But both belief and disbelief are actually a form of faith—either you take a step believing something will catch you, or you take a step understanding you have no idea what comes next.

Missionary me just trying to survive.