Heretic
A truly preposterous script wrapped in a bunch of dollar-store philosophy, with a bunch of fourth-wall breaking quips so that any criticism is redundant. They have simply too many outright exposition, even after the blood starts flowing.
Seriously, the exposition dumps are beyond the pale, I thought this was something from The Asylum, or one of those fake movies on TV, not an A24 production.
At some point, they break out a literal slide projector, as if they were in a lecture. How the mighty have fallen, from Hereditary to this? That might have been a fluke. Oh, the villain also carves images and has a miniature version of the set, add it to the list of A24 clichés.
Like The Whale, they chose the easiest cult to thoroughly mock, Mormons, where the “prophet” is literally a grifter that lived in modern-ish times. The adherents proselytise too, they don’t just have a church welcoming all, they actively want to know if you want to know more about our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
On the second room, there’s a weird tangent about board games and music, swerving back to religion in a most cur way! To get to the third room, we require a fake choice, the Belief and Disbelief doors both lead to the same parlour trick with dead girls and blueberry pie. There’s even discussion of the simulation hypothesis, they talk about an Conductor, what’s this, The Matrix Revolutions?
After the final girl goes further down, she returns for a final fake out ending, before the real deal, absolutely disgusting. Ultimately, love conquers all, even death. Could have been a Hallmark film.
The contrast between the missionaries is pushed to the max: the final girl is a goody two shoes, dressed in the most modest way possible, with massive glasses (which she loses at some point, without explanation), thigh-high socks and a long skirt. Her companion is a goth.
The opening establishes that the goth girl is just doing this to be with her friend, she doesn’t believe any of this supernatural crap. The believer really likes porn involving humiliation, for some reason. I really thought all that talk about magnum condoms would be called back at some point, but this is not Boogie Nights.
I thought the true religious was going to be Satanism, but everyone knows the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the only true god, and pirates are its prophets. He boiled for your sins! May His Noodly Appendage touch you all! Ramen!
The end credits scene is sung by one of the protagonists, with a Licorice Pizza company, what is going on here?
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.