Heretic (2024)
Directed by Scott Beck
No — Heretic is not especially woke, scoring 20 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Two missionaries knock on a door in Boulder, Colorado, and find a man who would rather lecture them than convert.
Consciousness Markers
The film is structurally built around Mr. Reed's extended monologues on religion, control, and belief, with The Atlantic dubbing it 'a horror movie about an atheist who won't shut up.'
The film centers two competent female missionaries and frames its villain as a man whose project is the domination and control of women, though it stops short of explicit feminist messaging.
The two leads are young women, and the supporting cast includes a few performers of color in minor roles, but the ensemble is overwhelmingly white and casting appears driven by story rather than a diversity mandate.
Mr. Reed's lecture advances the fringe Christ myth theory, recasting Jesus as an iteration of Mithras and Horus, a revisionist claim about religious history, though it is voiced by the villain rather than endorsed.
No LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or themes appear anywhere in the film.
Race is never a subject of the film; the story is entirely concerned with religion, belief, and control.
There is no environmental or climate theme in the film.
No economic critique or class-based 'eat the rich' content is present; the antagonist's motive is theological, not financial.
The film's imagery of emaciated caged women runs contrary to any body-positivity theme; none is present.
No neurodivergent characters or themes are depicted or discussed.
Why it received this score
Two missionaries knock on a door in Boulder, Colorado, and find a man who would rather lecture them than convert. Scott Beck and Bryan Woods have built a chamber piece around Hugh Grant's Mr. Reed, a theology hobbyist who has spent decades collecting the receipts of comparative religion and now wishes to share them with two nineteen-year-olds who cannot leave. The house is a trap, the blueberry pie is a scented candle, and the two doors lead to the same basement. It is a tidy construction, and Grant performs it with the relish of a man who has been waiting his whole career to be this unpleasant in a cardigan. The film's central engine is talk, and it runs on that fuel for longer than the plot can comfortably sustain. The Atlantic called it a horror movie about an atheist who won't shut up, which is accurate and also the entire second act.
The picture is bookended by women of faith, and it treats them with a respect that stops just short of argument. Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton are competent, frightened, and finally resourceful, and the villain's project is explicitly the domination of women, though the film never pauses to announce this as a thesis. It simply lets the cages in the final chamber do the talking. The supporting cast is small and largely white, the ensemble assembled for the story's needs instead of a casting brief. Race is not a subject here. Neither is class, nor the climate, nor the body, nor the mind's varied wiring. Mr. Reed's motive is theological and personal, not financial, so there is no appetite for the rich. There is a great deal of appetite for explaining things.
That explanation is where the film's cultural temperature actually sits. Mr. Reed delivers a long disquisition on Mithras and Horus and the borrowed architecture of belief, a fringe hypothesis that the screenplay puts in the mouth of a maniac and lets the audience sort out. The lecture is the point and also the flaw. What we get is a well-made thriller that flatters its audience's skepticism while quietly admiring its victims' sincerity, and then ends on a butterfly that vanishes. A fair trade, all things considered.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Part of
Synopsis
Two young missionaries are forced to prove their faith when they knock on the wrong door and are greeted by a diabolical Mr. Reed, becoming ensnared in his deadly game of cat-and-mouse.
Questions about Heretic
Is Heretic woke?
No — Heretic is not especially woke, scoring 20 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Based.
Does Heretic have any woke elements?
2 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Lecture Energy (65) and Feminist Agenda (30). On Lecture Energy: The film is structurally built around Mr.
How does Heretic compare to other 2024 movies?
It ranks #78 of the 189 films from 2024 we've scored; their average is 22. The wokest is The Six Triple Eight (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.