Heretic: A Nuanced Depiction of Faith

Willingness to tackle uncomfortable topics doesn't equate to an exploitative expose

Heretic begins as Sister Paxton recounts a spiritual experience to her companion Sister Barnes not gained from a testimony meeting or through proselyting but from watching a pornographic video. In the video, a woman caught in the act by her neighbors becomes visibly upset. Sister Paxton interpreted the woman’s look of extreme shock, shame, and regret as proof of the restored gospel’s teachings on guilt, chastity, and divine feminine worth.

Sister Barnes—a convert raised in Philadelphia with considerable street smarts—treats Sister Paxton with amusement rather than shame. “So you watch porn?” she quizzically enquires followed by Sister Paxton’s embarrassed denial.

Everything about Sister Paxton’s appearance, mannerisms, and Utah upbringing might project the image of a naïve Mormon girl; yet, like even the most cookie-cutter Latter-day Saint Sister Paxton has encountered plenty of reasons to believe from even the most unlikely sources. The opening scene’s intentionally jarring mixture of the spiritual and profane immediately signals Heretic’s refusal to paint Mormonism and religious faith as a black-and-white dichotomy of wrong and right.

The film’s villainous Mr. Reed, on the other hand, treats religion as an all-or-nothing proposition. Luring Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes into his home posing as a curious investigator, Mr. Reed slowly drops his façade with piercing questions and accusations about Joseph Smith’s polygamy and Fanny Alger.

After the sisters fail to leave his dungeon-like house following the unusually antagonistic exchange, Mr. Reed brings them into his back room, promising them access to a back door exit. Mr. Reed presents the sisters with two doors, one marked ‘Disbelief’ and the other ‘Belief’, to choose between. Both doors lead to an underground dungeon, where Mr. Reed continues his Saw-like psychological, religious test for the rest of the film.

Several Latter-day Saint reviews and reactions to Heretic have missed out on the interplay between belief and disbelief instead hyper-focusing on the villain’s broad-stroke arguments against Mormonism and religions altogether. For instance, Deseret News reviewer Tad Welch dismisses Heretic as one in a “growing line of Hollywood vehicles dismissive of what believers find sacred” taking umbrage at Mr. Reed’s “anti-religious TED talk”.

While Mr. Reed carries out his plans and spouts his anti-religious diatribes with hopes of corrupting the sisters’ beliefs and validating his own, the film does not share his interests. Many of Mr. Reed’s initial critiques of religion and Mormonism might cover familiar ground but once required to give concrete evidence Mr. Reed’s nihilistic beliefs fall apart. Mr. Reed’s thesis that religion is a heap of lies concocted to wield power and control over its adherents fails to consider any lived experience in faith and religion.

Instead, Heretic’s sympathies lie entirely with the sister missionaries. We share in their horror as they slowly realize the escalated state of danger they find themselves in.

In a scene critics of the film particularly like to single out as offensive to Latter-day Saint beliefs, a group of teenagers pull down the sisters’ skirts to reveal their garments as part of a Tik-Tok prank. Such an embarrassing moment highlights how much humiliation and pushback the sisters receive every day as they openly share their personal beliefs with others not as a way to elicit laughter or derision from the audience.

Told largely from the sisters’ perspective, Heretic never falls into an anti-Mormon creed or a rejection of religion and faith. Yes, the film engages with difficult aspects of Latter-day Saint history and practice—from garments to polygamy—but so must every Latter-day Saint however hard they may avoid these unsavory or unpopular topics. The profane aspects of Mormonism and faiths of all dominations highlighted in Mr. Reed’s diatribes interact and contrast with the personal beliefs and convictions of the sister missionaries.

Sister Barnes forcibly pushes back against the arrogant Mr. Reed, displaying maturity in her nuanced beliefs that our villain is incapable or unwilling to honestly grapple with. The sisters may have no control over their fate in Mr. Reed’s violent scheme but Heretic ultimately provides them space to hold onto and potentially even strengthen their beliefs in the face of such cruelty.

In the most defiant repudiation of Mr. Reed’s philosophies, Sister Paxton does not rely on the truth claims we normally associate with missionaries’ teachings to justify her faith. Instead, she mentions the famous Harvard double-blind study that found prayer had no effect on recovery rate for hospital patients. Sister Paxton admits she doesn’t believe in the orthodox Latter-day Saint belief of healing through prayer yet she still prays—not because her leaders force her to but because caring for others is a beautiful truth to her that brings her peace.

To believers that place orthodoxy to church doctrine above all else, such rejection of long-standing scriptural teachings would naturally be heretical. Sister Paxton’s religious observance does not rely on trying to prove unverifiable or even downright false truth claims. She holds faith because of the peace and meaning her faith brings to her life.

Heretic allows the sisters to find validation in their faith while giving the audience space for their own religious or non-religious interpretation of each character’s arc and the film’s conclusion. There is no repudiation of Mr. Reed’s theory of religious control or any concrete proof of religion’s various truth claims. Much like religion itself, Heretic doesn’t leave us with simple or easy answers but remains in the space between the profane and the sacred; faith and doubt; beliefs and practice.

To those hesitant to check out Heretic, don’t let the film’s rough edges and willingness to tackle uncomfortable subjects keep you from enjoying its nuanced representation of Latter-day Saint faith. Despite a few loud complaints about surface-level issues of religious representation, Heretic is just the type of film that captures the paradoxical nature of living a religious faith in everyday life.