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| “ | The choice is simple, but it shouldn't be made simply. | „ |
| ~ Mr. Reed challenging the girls to choose a door based on their faith. |
Mr. Reed is the titular main antagonist of the 2024 religious horror film Heretic. At first appearing as a reclusive and senilely innocent old man, however he is revealed to be a deranged and sociopathic kidnapper who believes that control is the one true religion.
With this belief, he captures religious women and forces them into mentally-destroying challenges of faith to exert power over them and make them his "prophets." He tries to do the same to Sister Barnes and Paxton, two mormon missionaries who try to convert him to the Church of Latter Day Saints.
He was portrayed by Hugh Grant, who also portrayed Phoenix Buchanan from Paddington 2, Forge Fitzwiliiam from Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Blitzen from Robbie the Reindeer, and Jonathan Fraser from The Undoing.
Personality[]
At first, Mr. Reed presents himself as a kind and curious recluse who has genuine intrigue in the concept of religion. When talking to the sisters, he's genuinely affable and the girls are easily drawn in with his charm. However, he also starts to ask disturbing questions about the polygamy and Barnes's past, hinting at a more disturbed and unsettling side. He's able to brush off their concerns however, going back to his amiable nature.
Then, as his true colors are revealed, Reed shows himself to be a deeply cynical man about religion and the nature of life and the concept of resurrection. Using the game monopoly as a metaphor for how different religions copy off of each other, it hints that he's deeply unhappy how none of the religions have given him the spiritual enlightenment he's always searched for. However, he also hints that at the same time, he's a sadist who enjoys deconstructing the faith that people have held on to for their entire lives. He mocks Sister Barnes for holding on to faith as a way to hold on to her deceased father, interrogating her if that's what she truly believes or just follows what others have told her. When he holds his trial to prove the faith of the Sisters, both doors lead to the same basement, showing that he also rigs the game in a way to give his victims false hope before taking it away.
His sadism is greatly expanded on when he shows off one of his "prophets" eating a poisoned blueberry pie and then showing them a false resurrection to further push his point of no life after death on them. However, when Sister Barnes deduces that this was a magic trick and the prophet was describing a near death experience, he kills her to maintain control over the situation. Then he spins a half-hearted theory that she was a program in a simulation in order to keep control over Paxton. This proves that he hates being proven wrong and forces his own beliefs onto them as a sign of dominance.
Finally, when he imprisoned prophets are revealed, he attempts to rape Sister Paxton, showing the true depravity of his character as a monster who enjoys preying on people at their lowest. Also, he never drops his polite and affable tone, proving that he is completely apathetic to his victims suffering. In the end, after Paxton manages to stab him and escape, he makes one last jest at the girls expense to pray for both of them. When Paxton tells him that prayer doesn't work, but comforts them when they need it, Reed expresses somewhat of a catharsis that he has been yearning for so long for. However, that doesn't detract from the evil he has done in his "studies" about control and religion, and despite appearing genuinely moved by her conviction, he still tried to kill her.
Underneath his jovial, friendly and intelligent facade, Reed is a spiteful man who wants his victims to feel the same hopelessness that he feels by exerting his power over them. However, he fails to break the faith of his latest victims which leads to Paxton escaping and Barnes finishing him for good.
Biography[]
Members of the Church of Latter Day Saints Barnes and Paxton arrive at Mr. Reed's house in an attempt to convert him to their cause. He warmly invites them inside as the rain begins to fall and tells them that his wife is making blueberry pie. As the two missionaries take in the seemingly small house, Mr. Reed returns with two diet cokes and begins to discuss about religion. The conversation is friendly enough, with Barnes admitting that her father died of Lou Gherig's disease. However, he asks an odd question on the Mormon's take on polygamy and how Joseph may have used it to justify his affairs with multiple women, which unnerves the girls. But, he digresses and claims that he was joking. But, he then monologues about his study of religion and how his travels and research have led him to the conclusion of "one true religion."
Just then, he leaves the room and the girls debate about leaving the house. Just then, Barnes notices that there was a scented candle on the table that smelled of blueberry pie, thus exposing the first deception. Realizing that they might be in danger, the girls attempt to leave but the door is locked. Since there are metal in the walls, the girls can't call for help and are trapped in the house. Deciding to ask Reed to let them out, they follow him, unaware of the horrors ahead.
Eventually, they enter a room that resembles a pew with two doors and plenty of religious paraphernalia from various faiths across the world. Mr. Reed arrives and tells them that the front door is on a time lock and won't open until morning. As the girls attempt to ask nicely to leave, Reed tells them that they must enter the back of his house through the two doors. Knowing there's a catch, Barnes asks what it is that he's looking for. He then begins a lecture using Monopoly as an example for how religion copies on to each other with the same concepts and ideas; he sardonically noted that the religious concepts adapted into pop culture may end up making that fiction confused as fact in later centuries, the same as he believed all faiths were inherently. As he equated religions with various versions of Monopoly, he taunted that the women's own Mormon faith was the "wacky regional variant." He reaches the conclusion that there is no afterlife and that religion is just used to make people complacent with society.
Mr. Reed then writes the words "Belief" and "Disbelief" on the doors, challenging the girls which one to go through if their fate is the strongest. Paxton attempts to go through the disbelief door because it seems like the most logical option. However, Barnes rebukes him and claims that the choice doesn't matter and that he only brings up the negative side of religion while disregarding the people who believe it, using statistics that ignore historical persecution and extermination, and overly simplifies his 12 selected religious figures to imply cynical repetition that dismissed how most are more different than alike. She and Paxton then decide to go through the belief door instead, which leads to a dark tunnel that goes underground.
Barnes and Paxton search the dungeon room for an exit, with the only things in the room a card table and foldout chair. Barnes moved the table and placed the chair on top to try to reach the high window; despite reaching for it, she can't touch it, and only managed to tear away a plank of wood with three nails jutting out of them. As they hear the door atop the stairs open, they quickly return the table and chair to their original positions and hide the plank behind a column. Barnes gave a sharp letter opener she scavenged from Reed's "church" to Paxton, as she noted that Reed was too cautious of Barnes for her to attack him off-guard; they agreed on the code word of "magic underpants" to commence the attack.
In his office above, Reed announced through the speaking tube about how he discovered a "prophet." This Prophet is a desiccated woman in white, but damp and dirty robes; she placed a blueberry pie on the table. Reed explained that the pie was poisoned and that his Prophet shall eat it and die, but resurrect. The Prophet consumed large chunks of the pie, appeared to choke and then died. Reed ordered the missionaries to confirm her death by checking for lack of pulse and cessation of breathing, which they comply and confirm.
Reed is interrupted by his doorbell, which Barnes and Paxton deduce would be Elder Kennedy from their church, as their absence would have been noticed; despite screaming through the crack under the basement door, Reed's house is too compartmentalised and sound-proofed for the Elder to hear their cries. Instead, they pull at a rug that had matches on it, as they decided to light a fire whose smoke would alert the Elder. Reed returned to his office, forcing the women to stop, but the doorbell rang again, as the Elder desired to give a pamphlet before leaving, which Reed acted happy to accept. The added time allowed the women to retrieve several matches.
Barnes and Paxton return to the dungeon, with the latter noting that the Prophet had appeared to have moved since they left, but Barnes argued it was just fear and paranoia. While they light multiple matches, they fail to start a fire, and are shocked when the Prophet appeared to revive; the Prophet vomited out what appeared to be the poisoned blueberry pie, then muttered some menacing descriptions of the afterlife she saw, though finished with "it isn't real." Reed arrived in the dungeon, seemingly indifferent to them using salvaged matches, as he lit one himself to feign helpfulness.
Reed questioned the women what they thought about his miracle, as the Prophet shifted away upstairs to somewhere else. Barnes noted the descriptions that the Prophet gave, but dismissed them as merely symptoms of a near-death experience, as the brain can conjure random images and sounds when upon dying; Barnes revealed that she suffered from consuming E. coli in fast food as a child, and explained that she had died for a few minutes, thus how she knew that the Prophet's visions were just brainwaves in distress. Barnes then concluded there wasn't a miracle, but a magic trick orchestrated by Reed; she argued that the first Prophet died, but a second similar woman took her place to create the illusion of resurrection. Reed queried how he accomplished this, and while Barnes admitted she didn't know, she refused to be fooled by him.
Just as Barnes was about to signal Paxton to attack, Reed slit her throat with a box cutter, horrifying Paxton into stillness. As Reed laid Barnes on the floor, he sliced a scar he had noticed in her bicep, retrieving a contraceptive device; Reed claimed that the Prophet's final words of "it's not real" referred to reality itself, and the device he cut out was a microchip that prevented Barnes from reviving upon death in the simulation. Paxton, however, despite her terror, noted that it was only a contraceptive device, and his murder of Barnes and sudden proclamation of a virtual reality was him improvising; the so-called Prophet was given a script from him to say, but her final remark wasn't written, thus Reed panicked about losing control, bringing up his dramatic shift in thesis. The message of "it's not real" was in reference to Reed's declaration of a miracle, which the second Prophet was trying to warn the young women about.
Paxton continued Barnes's idea that the Prophet's revival was a magic trick, with the second woman removing the dead body before taking its place; Reed mockingly patted the walls to ask where such a secret entrance would be hidden. Yet Paxton deduced it was beneath the table, as she moved mud to discover a hidden trapdoor; Reed noted that she isn't right until she knows for certain. Paxton descended the ladder and discovered the first Prophet, dead as expected. Paxton asked what she would find deeper in the tunnels, which he cheerfully yet darkly noted was the "one true religion," before shutting the trapdoor.
Paxton continued through the single tunnel, stopped by a series of three doors with pagan iconography and rooms filled with various religious texts. She ultimately arrived in a larger, well-lit room filled with cages, with most cages each holding a woman of sickly pallid complexion and blackened eyes, close to the Prophet. Paxton offered the women sympathy, and found the second Prophet, giving her gratitude for the warning. Reed appeared from the staircase leading back up into the house; he questioned her if she understood what his idea of the only real God was, and she answered control. From the start, he had been setting choices and questions that create the illusion of free will, yet he had rigged it all so that they were trapped under his control. Reed commended her, while noting that every religion, no matter the doctrine or dogma, was only about control; he also admitted that the Prophets were given scripts, and that the second went off that script, with him expressing his displeasure by cutting off one of the second Prophet's fingers.
As Reed encroached upon Paxton, he gave another mocking recap of Mormonism, yet unwittingly gave Barnes's code phrase, with Paxton exploiting his arrogance to stab him in the throat with the letter opener before fleeing up the stairs. Despite returning into the house proper, the complicated mechanisms still had every conceivable access point sealed; Paxton returned to the first dungeon to try the window, but also check on Barnes to see if she was still alive. Finding the dungeon still limited, and saddened to see Barnes seemingly still deceased, Paxton was caught unaware as Reed stabbed her in the gut with his box cutter.
Both weakened by their injuries, they both collapse to the floor on either side of the dungeon. Paxton asked Reed if he knew about the prayer experiment, which he confessed to not know; she explained that two groups were set, one offering prayers and the other not. She said that the experiment conclusively proved that prayer doesn't work, which appeared to amuse Reed. However, Paxton countered that prayer is still a beautiful thing, as it has value in offering kindness to others, even if material results don't occur, and she would still pray to be compassionate, even for him. Reed appeared moved by her statement as she began to pray, and he dragged himself towards her. Despite being spiritually moved, Reed still prepared his blade to kill her, but before he could, his head was pierced by the board with nails, wielded by Barnes, whom had managed to have one more burst of life to save her friend, before collapsing once more.
Paxton silently thanked her friend before returning to Reed's office, as she recalled the scale model of his house; she explored the model to find an escape route through an air duct, which she followed in the actual house to escape outside. Despite her injuries, she appeared to be capable of returning to the town to retrieve care and likely send rescue for the other women trapped because of Reed's psychotic disillusionment with belief.
Quotes[]
| “ | So why does the original monotheistic religion have fewer followers than its later iterations? Marketing! Much like what you're doing, being good little salesmen. | „ |
| ~ Mr. Reed's cynical conclusion that a faith's prominence is based largely on capitalistic strategy |
| “ | Mr. Reed: With great power, comes great responsibility. Sister Paxton: Spider-Man? |
„ |
| ~ An example of Reed's knowledge, yet also insistence on adhering to the original iteration |
Trivia[]
- He displayed the property board game The Landlord's Game as the precursor to the vastly more well-known Monopoly; the original game had an anti-capitalistic taxation rule, which was removed from the subsequent Monopoly, which Reed used to play into his rationale that every religion is merely a copy of an older one, but each copy loses ideas that were important in previous iterations.
- During his speech connecting Messiah figures that resurrect in numerous different religions, he connected it to Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, as it too had a virgin women immaculately conceive a being that was considered a "chosen one" and saviour, like the religious inspirations. His point was to trivialize each faith as equally fictitious as the famous science fiction fantasy franchise.