RELIGION AND POLITICS: HERETIC (2024) and CONCLAVE (2024)

 

Unlike Barbarian, Cuckoo, Longlegs and even Alien: Romulus, the startlingly effective Heretic is in the game not for the shocks (though there are a couple of really good ones) or gore or reassuring genre fans with familiar tropes and recycled stories. No, Heretic understands and revels in the queasy pleasures of slow-burn suspense, and, unlike those disappointments mentioned above, it actually does not become less interesting in proportion to the amount of information which slowly becomes clear as the movie moves to its satisfying conclusion. 

And finally, unlike those other movies, it is unapologetically a horror movie based on ideas; the film lays the foundations of its standoff between two Mormon missionaries and the simultaneously accommodating and intimidating subject of their witness (Hugh Grant, maximizing his talent at instantaneously shifting between and exposing gradations of unctuousness and menace) in terms of, of all things, theological debate and inquiry— perhaps not the most tantalizing come-on to sensation-seeking audiences, but once the movie gets its hooks in you (which doesn’t take long, thanks to the appealing performances of Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher as the missionaries) it’s hard to look away, and also sometimes hard to breathe. 

Writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (who wrote A Quiet Place) have confidence in their concept and they know how to use Panavision-sized close-ups better than just about anyone since the Brian De Palma of Dressed to Kill and Blow Out— getting this close to Grant in particular would probably be no one’s first choice, but the strategy yields almost unbearably tense results as the narrative begins to bear down on the missionaries and the audience. 

And no one would likely ever guess that a horror thriller centered around characters for whom the evolution of religious and mythological history actually seem to mean something would be anything much more than a dry misfire. But the power Heretic derives from that framework is about as improbable a development in the horror genre as any that has come around the pike in a good, long while, and it finds a way to terrify and satisfy its audience in a way that none of those aforementioned (and acclaimed) pictures ever managed to do. Finally, it ought to undermine the comforting scent of blueberry pie for a generation or so to come. See it on the big screen if you can.

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Conclave, directed by Edward Berger, may seem like it could be nothing but a slog based on its subject matter, but trust me, it’s not a dry dud on the order of the 1968 film made from Morris West’s novel The Shoes of the Fisherman.— this new drama is about as absorbing and compelling a movie as I’ve seen this year and it doesn’t have an overcooked, histrionic scene in it. Ralph Fiennes is a cardinal whose lack of ambition presiding over the Vatican election of a new pope to replace the recently deceased Infallible One will not keep him out of the running, whether he likes it or not, and no matter what others in the running may or may not do to keep him in or out of the contest.

As sociopolitical allegories go, Conclave isn’t subtle— it all but declares its intentions about halfway through, if you haven’t figured it out yet. (“It‘s like we’re at an American political convention,” one incredulous cardinal decries to no one’s great surprise.) But it doesn’t necessarily need to be. Writer-director Edward Berger’s storytelling instincts serve him far better than they did in his overblown Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front from a couple years ago— here he displays an almost eerie confidence without relying on insisting on his authority over the narrative, and the result is a movie that is almost sinfully watchable.

And to that end, he’s got a great stable of actors to complement Fiennes and himself in Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Lucien Msamati, Sergio Castellito, Carlos Diehz, Jacek Koman and, perhaps most welcome of all, Isabella Rossellini, who holds the screen with Fiennes and Tucci despite not having a number of strong scenes in which do so. Go in cold, as I did (I’d only seen the solid trailer, which sets up the tone and interest but gives little away), and even if you’ve never set foot in a Catholic church I predict you’ll cave for Conclave.

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