Heretic (Emylee)

Hey everyone, this is a pretty long one. I was inspired. I recently watched the new psychological horror movie Heretic that came out a couple months ago. I went into it thinking that it was going to be distasteful and laughingly inaccurate in its portrayal of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I read that the two women who played the sister missionaries claimed that they used to be in the church, and that made it easier for the producers to show how they might act. Admittedly, I thought this movie was going to really irritate me and serve as a Hollywood criticism built on stereotypes trying to cover a large group of individually very different people (I attend activities at that church frequently and have many family members and friends who are members that I hold to a very high regard.) My dad watched it after I did out of curiosity, and guess what? We actually both really liked it. For a brief overview, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton go to this one guy’s house and he insists that his wife will come and join them soon. He leaves the room and they get suspicious and creeped out and try to leave, but his door is locked on a timer. They have no service to call anyone so they have no choice but to go deeper into the house and find him. He keeps playing mind games with them and pretending to be nice, which actually almost worked on me (just jokes, he’s played by Hugh Grant.) Anyways, he turns out to be a psychotic cult leader named Mr. Reed and tries to use all these “parables” to convince them that their church wasn’t true and “God isn’t real, religion is just used for control.” I got what the movie was trying to do, and there were some really thought-provoking points, but ultimately what deterred me was the fact that if I were a missionary in this weirdo’s house, his opinion wouldn’t matter to me. Why is he so pressed and making claims that their religion, and all religions, are horrible? He’s the one that’s kidnapping women and trying to play God by making a mental maze. The scariest part was when he broke the fourth wall and started talking about 2017 Lana Del Rey. Anyways, something that I did not expect was the overall pretty positive portrayal of the LDS church throughout. Sister Barnes ended up sacrificing herself to kill Mr. Reed before he could kill Sister Paxton, and neither of the missionaries would give up their faith to the very end. There were themes of perseverance and staying true to being a good person even when they didn’t know how to defend their faith. Also, Mr. Reed ended up being the one having no peace at the end, and he crawled over to die in Sister Paxton’s arms as he finally gave into his lifelong fear of death. As she said, loosely paraphrased, “Even if religion isn’t real, it’s nice to know that we can all pray for each other and hope for peace and reunion in the end. Even if it’s for people like YOU.” However you feel about all the different religions, I think that we could all agree that intentions make all the difference. The sister missionaries were trying to spread hope, and Mr. Reed was just a horrible person. While my personal beliefs as of right now are that I choose to believe in God, I cannot think of a way to prove this. I simply believe in God because I hope for this to be real, and that is the end of it. No matter if you are like me with some rather unconventional beliefs, such as that God may be real but religion is just formed from tradition and the Bible is largely just cultural stories; or if you are steadfast in your religion in all of the traditional senses, the thing that sets us apart from Mr. Reed is truly loving each other and hoping for a happy turnout on Earth and in Heaven for everyone. What do you think about this complicated subject?