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    • Heretic Ending Explained: What Is the One True Religion?
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    Heretic Ending Explained: What Is the One True Religion?

    Vaseline Posted on

    This article contains spoilers for Heretic. If you’re here to find out if there’s a post-credits scene, there isn’t.

    Heretic was always going to be a film that relied on its performances. Going in, we assume it will be a chamber piece focusing on two Mormon missionaries trying to convert an old man to their religion, which will require some serious acting from all three leads if the audience is to remain engaged. These performances are all plentiful, but by Act 3 we know that things are not as they seem and that we are going far beyond a cozy living room conversation about religion.

    Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) arrive at Mr. Reed’s (Hugh Grant) house just as a snowstorm begins. The seemingly friendly man invites the icy missionaries into his living room and emphasizes that his wife is just in the kitchen baking a blueberry pie. The two girls can smell the treat and reluctantly enter the house with the caveat that Mr. Reed’s wife must join them once she finishes baking.

    Unfortunately, Mrs. Reed is completely made up, Mr. Reed has concocted the scent with a scented candle, and he has a whole host of tricks and traps in his out-of-control house of doom, specifically designed, he insists, to challenge faith in order to find the truth . the one true religion.

    Heretical ending explained

    An important thing to know if you go to Heretic is that there isn’t really a second act. That could be possible kind of claiming there is one for the brief period where Reed locks the girls in the basement and Nurse Barnes is still alive, but that simply doesn’t exist most of the time. One moment the three are having a lively debate about faith, who is right and whether or not Mr. Reed should convert, and the next moment both sisters are trapped in a murder cellar staring down a would-be prophet.

    Reed is able to trap the sisters in the basement by creating the illusion of choice. Much of the film’s running time involves Grant bringing out every ounce of charisma (which, after years of watching his films, we know is quite a lot), as he cheerfully tells the girls that they are free to play at any time to leave. But that freedom was never there, and the choices were all illusions.

    After the girls end up in the basement, Nurse Barnes has had enough. She begins to actively challenge Mr. Reed, while the more timid sister watches. The final straw is Reed’s prophet trick, in which a disheveled woman is pulled out of yet another invisible basement hallway from Hell, given poison, dies, and then miraculously returns to share what God has told her.

    Sister Barnes isn’t sure why at first, but she knows it’s nonsense. But before she can prove it, Mr. Reed slits her throat and insists to the shocked Sister Paxton that her partner could come back to life at any moment, with her prophecies and untold wisdom. When that clearly doesn’t happen, Reed gasps in horror as he “realizes” the scar on Nurse Barnes’ arm (he had seen it when they had tea in the living room earlier and decides to use it to his advantage). The apparently aggrieved man begins to insist that “they stabbed her” and continues to talk about a conspiracy as the girl bleeds and breathes her last, knowing all along that the scar on her arm was for Nexplanon – a contraceptive drug. implant.

    It’s here that the film’s tone takes a harsh turn, with Mr. Reed turning from a nosy (but clearly nefarious) objector to a deranged conspiracy theorist. But as Sister Paxton navigates deeper into the labyrinth of the basement, she discovers that Mr. Reed was neither seeking faith nor mentally ill. In his mind he had already found the one true religion.

    Sister Paxton eventually realizes that the ‘prophet’ was not one woman, but two (with the first murdered for the sole purpose of challenging the sisters) and comes across a room full of starving and half-frozen women locked in cages. The second woman who uttered the nonsensical “prophecy” added a warning that helped Sister Paxton come to this realization. Mr. Reed cuts off part of her finger with garden shears for her troubles, and happily chats with Sister Paxton to see if she has come to realize what his legendary one true religion might be.

    Just some loser with cages full of women in his basement, determined to exert his power over the women he traps

    It’s control. No gods, prophets or ghosts, just a loser with cages full of women in his basement, who is determined to exert his power over the women he has ensnared.

    After this revelation, the rest of the film plays out pretty much as you’d expect, with one final shock. Sister Paxton fights to escape and manages to return to the main basement room where Sister Barnes’ body lies. It is here that her final confrontation with Mr. Reed takes place, where the battle is no longer a battle of wits, but for her life. It appears that Mr. Reed will emerge victorious for a moment, leaving Sister Paxton to suffer the same fate as her friend or a short life in one of the man’s cages. But just as victory begins to seem impossible, Sister Barnes (who was thought dead, as you will recall) rises with the last vestiges of her strength and helps Sister Paxton kill Mr. Reed. Sister Barnes then dies.

    We’re given the implication that Sister Paxton will continue to live—albeit slightly less clairvoyantly as she was at the beginning of Heretic—as she wanders into the blizzard, but the ostensible point of the film remains rooted in Reed’s thirst. for control to the point that it has become his religion.

    Do you think The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has psychiatrists on call?

    Does Heretic have an after-credits scene?

    As previously noted, Heretic has no post-credits scenes. However, there is a note “No generative AI was used in the making of this film” while scrolling the credits.

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