Film

Heretic
Director: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods
Beck/Woods, Shiny Penny
In Theaters: 11.01

As a native Utahn who group up in the LDS Church, and a cinephile, I’ve often lamented the fact that while the church gets a certain amount of representation in film, we haven’t had anything close to a horror film since Trapped by The Mormons in 1922. It’s not like the genre doesn’t have plenty of potential. Family Home Evil and Baptism for The Walking Dead—these concepts practically write themselves. Count your blessings, brothers and sisters, because with the release of Heretic, the second coming of the genre is here at last.

The story takes place in a rural Colorado town, where a pair of missionaries, Sister Paxton (Chloe East, The Fabelmans) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher, The Book of Boba Fett) are having a discouraging day, having no luck making new contacts and even getting harassed by a group of teens who pull down Sister Paxton’s skirt to see if she is really wearing “magic underwear.”  Despite a rainstorm, they decide to stop by the home of a potential golden contact, Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Paddington 2), a charming man who has done his studying and expressed a great deal of interest in the church.  While they are wary of entering his home without another woman—rules require them not to be alone with a man—Reed assures them that his wife is in the kitchen baking a blueberry pie.  Once inside, the sisters relax as Mr. Reed starts discussing religion, pulling out a heavily notated copy of the Book of Mormon. Sister Paxton is quickly put at ease by his friendly demeanor, while Sister Barnes remains uneasy. As the conversation progresses, and Reed begins to pointedly question their beliefs, they realize that Reed hasn’t invited them to his house to convert him. Is he trying to convert them? Or does he have something even darker in mind? As he tricks them into going into the basement, he reveals two doors, one marked “belief” and one “disbelief,” and they must choose which will lead them to safety.

There’s already a rather vocal crowd labeling Heretic as an attack against the LDS faith, but while it raises many interesting questions about religion and touches briefly on church history, the film doesn’t push any one point of view, and it’s certainly not designed to malign the faith. , Writer-director team Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who co-wrote A Quiet Place with John Krasinski, have created a horror film with a highly intriguing premise, and Mormonism is simply the religion that best fits it’s  terrifying premise. The Sister missionaries are great characters who easily come across as young and naïve, yet they also show great moments of strength, drawing on their faith to bolster themselves. If you believe that any mention of the polygamy or the simple fact that Temple garments seem rather strange to most nonmembers, then yes, you will be every bit as offended as you want to be. If you can keep an open mind, you’re unlikely to find anything to be directly offended by here.  The fact is that the Mormons are the protagonists, not the villains, and just as they did in a Quiet Place, Beck and Woods demonstrate that horror is at its scariest when it follows good people whom you can genuinely care about. That’s not to say that it’s a pro-Mormonism movie, either, it’s just a movie. The philosophical and theological deep dive that the clever script take wisely leaves the audience with plenty of room to get what they choose out of it. I even took my actively religious mission companion to the screening as my plus one, and we both thoroughly enjoyed the film.

Grant is a diabolically delicious and wonderfully complex villain, and it’s a performance and a character who deserves to join the ranks of Hannibal Lecter and Misery’s Annie Bates. It’s still Thatcher and East who drives the film,, and both are likable and engaging.  The fact that Thatcher grew up LDS and her family is still active was undoubtedly an asset in capturing the culture and the details with such impressive accuracy. Topher Grace (That ‘70s Show) is effective as Elder Kennedy, a local stake or ward mission leader (it’s never quite specified) who goes searching for the Sisters when they don’t show up at the Church for an appointment, and he gets one the film’s best comic relief moments.

I’m not telling anyone that they have to see Heretic if they don’t want to, but I’d be ungrateful if I didn’t take this opportunity to bear my testimony that whatever your religious affiliation or lack thereof may be, this movie isn’t out to get you. It’s simply an extremely smart and atmospheric thriller that explores themes of the nature of belief and how it shapes our lives and our actions in a way that will give you a lot to talk about, and it’s one of the best suspense films I’ve seen in decades. I say these things in the name of Alfred Hitchcock. Amen. –Patrick Gibbs

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Lately, filmmaker Robert Zemeckis has been a somewhat confounding figure. The director of such beloved movies as the “Back to the Future” series, “Forrest Gump,” “Cast Away,” “Death Becomes Her” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” has delivered almost as many duds as hits, if you also take in “The Polar Express,” “Beowulf,” “Welcome to Marwen” and “Pinocchio.” An experimenter obsessed with special effects and the dramatic power they can exert in cinema, Zemeckis is always trying something new, especially with motion-capture technology. It doesn’t always work: Many of these projects drift into an unappealing uncanny valley. Despite his several attempts, he hasn’t quite nailed it yet.

In his new intergenerational family drama “Here,” based on a 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire (expanded from a six-page comic strip published in the comics anthology “Raw” in 1989), the experiment is the narrative itself, a family history spanning generations — and centuries — all told from one fixed point of view. In his formally inventive graphic novel, McGuire used frames within frames to visually represent different time periods within one panel.

Zemeckis maintains the frames-within-frames conceit as a transitional flourish in the film version of “Here,” but the plot itself is more about jumping around in time while maintaining the stationary camera. There are many inhabitants of this space, from a Native American couple (Joel Oulette and Dannie McCallum) in pre-Columbian times, to a young family in the Victorian era (Michelle Dockery and Gwilym Lee) who move into their modest Colonial home, and then later, the inventor of the La-Z-Boy recliner (David Fynn) and his ebullient wife (Ophelia Lovibond), who take the home. There’s also a present-day Black family (Nicholas Pinnock, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Cache Vanderpuye) navigating the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

But the story focuses predominantly on a family that occupies the house for most of the 20th century: a World War II veteran, Al (Paul Bettany), his wife, Rose (Kelly Reilly) and then their son Richard (Tom Hanks) and his wife, Margaret (Robin Wright). And yes, Hanks and Wright have been digitally de-aged — we see them for the first time as teens — and no, it does not work at all (there’s something very strange happening around Hanks’ de-aged mouth). Sure, the Hanks, Wright and Zemeckis trio supplies the gimmick of a “Forrest Gump” reunion, but why do we have to de-age Hanks when there are his real-life sons Colin and Truman at home? Even Wright has a look-alike actor daughter, Dylan Penn.

“Here” also has that Gumpian quality of major historical events lining up with personal stories: Benjamin Franklin (Keith Bartlett) and his son William (Daniel Betts) occupy the Colonial manor across the street; a pregnancy is announced as the Beatles take the stage on “The Ed Sullivan Show”; and seemingly everything relevant happens in this godforsaken living room, including weddings, births and breakups.

The story of “Here” surrounding Richard and Margaret is relatable, entirely predictable and utterly dull. They get pregnant as teens, move in with his family, he gives up art to get a real job, she wants her own space, etc.. Ostensibly, their story is about navigating the ups and downs of life, but ultimately it turns into a rather dispiriting tale about two people taking too long to pursue the things that make them happy, and for her, it’s getting out of that damn house, though if she ever left, there would be no “Here” here.

Changing hands over the years means real estate agents coming in and out throughout the film, and by the time the credits roll, you half expect the logo for a home insurance company to come up, because that’s what this whisper of a film feels like: a commercial for homeowners insurance. To be frank, there are 30-second spots that have inspired more tears and emotion than the flat, pointless “Here.”

Richard and Margaret’s daughter Vanessa (Zsa Zsa Zemeckis) disappears around age 16 and never reappears again, which is a shame, because the more interesting story isn’t the parents’ baby boomer tale, but perhaps how their Gen-X daughter or zoomer grandchildren might benefit from their generational wealth. “Here” doesn’t want to dig into any of the nuances surrounding that. But perhaps property values are just where the mind wanders when the story playing out is so treacly and stale.

This year has seen other daring projects from aging filmmakers who have experimented with cinematic form and function on their own terms — including Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” and Kevin Costner’s “Horizon.” While the efforts have been laudable, unfortunately, the results have all been flops and “Here” is no exception.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

“Godless” is a self-serious drama about the collision of politics and faith with a couple of decent moments and solid lead performances by Ana Ortiz and Harry Lennix going for it.

Working against it are a static staginess in the action — lots of talk and debate, little of it setting off any sparks — a truncated dramatic arc, messiness in the order of events as they’re presented (basically its a long flashback) with an abrupt “atonement” and reconciliation attempt for its finale.

But again, there’s serious subject matter to wrestle with.

Writer (“The Brooklyn Banker”) turned first-time writer-director Michael Ricigliano drops into a world of heavy-handed Catholic politicking as an upstart bishop (Lennix, a big and small screen veteran and regular on “The Black List”) excommunicating a gay marriage-endorsing, abortion-protecting New York governor (Ortiz, of TV’s “Ugly Betty” and “Love, Victor”).

The bishop is new to Brooklyn, and while he sent a letter “warning” to the governor, his Latin, sealed-in-wax edict can’t be read by any non-Catholic living in America in 2024 as anything but religious minority election interference.

Thus our first impression of Bishop Rolland, clumsily avoiding press questions about if “the Vatican is on board with this” as he condemns a Latina Catholic governor who “ceased to live as a Catholic” when she signed off on legislation, is that he’s a fanatic somewhat out of his depth as a political showboater.

Then we get a load of the turmoil in the archioceses, with a bishop (Thomas G. Waites) and archbishop (Dan Grimaldi) weighing whether they have the leverage to make this pay off.

Because popular Gov. Porra seems destined for the White House. And they simple can’t have a pro choice Catholic living on Washington’s Pennsylvania Ave.

Gov. Porra is facing a primary challenge, with her top aide (Patrick Breen) all-in on her drawing a broad coalition and doing “the right thing.” He’s gay, and bringing him along for “negotiations” with the unelected church power elite gives him the film’s only funny line.

“I’m Jewish!”

“So was Jesus,” the governor notes.

“Look what happened to him.”

There’s a squishiness to the point of view Ricigliano tries to impart here, a governor who says “I will not legislate my beliefs,” who says “contritition” is “not an option,” but who is conflicted about a bill the screenplay repeatedly refers to using right wing labeling — “late term abortion.”

The denial of Holy Communion to the governor by her parish priest is the jolt such political stunts are meant to deliver.

But a lot of counter-strategies are suggested by both sides, meeting in private, which are merely mentioned and not followed up on. An awful lot of the talk and scene-changing here seems pointless.

And then we get to the long third act meeting of reconciliation between the two, years later, introducing their “real” beliefs and guilty reasoning.

The leads in “Godless” dig into the “idea” for an interesting film. But this feels like the compromised, lost-its-nerve and too-short-to-score-points version.

Rating: R, profanity

Cast: Ana Ortiz, Harry Lennix, with Patrick Breen, Sarah Wharton, Dan Grimaldi and Thomas G. Waites.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Michael Ricigliano. A Without a Net release.

Running time: 1:26