The Entertainment
The Entertainment
30. Beck/Woods on ‘Heretic,’ Making Hugh Grant Scary, and the Meaning of Life
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30. Beck/Woods on ‘Heretic,’ Making Hugh Grant Scary, and the Meaning of Life

With echoes of M. Night Shyamalan and William F. Buckley, Jr.
Heretic Trailer: Hugh Grant Goes Bad In A24 Horror From A Quiet Place  Writers
Hugh Grant in Heretic

Today we’re looking at a movie that is about exploring more than just meaning in culture but meaning in general. What is meaning? How do we know? What do we believe and why? This may initially sound more like the territory of an art-house move or prestige drama, but it’s also the focus of the new horror film written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods called Heretic, which is playing now in theaters. It follows a pair of Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) who meet with a man claiming to be searching for information about their religion but who is, in fact, up to something substantially more sinister. Further complicating matters, he’s played by Hugh Grant.

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You might know Beck and Woods as the writers of A Quiet Place, which relied on its characters remaining as silent as possible to avoid the hyper-sensitive ears of a brutal alien race. Heretic, instead, is all about dialogue, a single location journey into the murky questions of faith, fear, and the meaning of life. How do you make a talky horror movie stay tense? How do you balance fears of the visceral with the existential? Can Hugh Grant’s charms be overridden by his possibly sinister intentions? How do perhaps unlikely influences, from M. Night Shyamalan to William F. Buckley, Jr. manifest on the screen? That’s the focus of today’s spoiler-free conversation.

Keep the conversation going in the comments. Follow The Entertainment on FacebookInstagram, or Substack and let us know what you think. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and we’d love it if you gave us a review. The Entertainment is a production of KIOS 91.5 FM Omaha Public Radio. It is produced and edited by Courtney Bierman. Our artwork was created by Topher Booth.

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The Entertainment
The Entertainment
Everything we do is filtered through entertainment. If it’s not entertaining, there is a good chance that nobody is paying attention. So, to understand the world, you have to not only look at your screen but comprehend what is on it. Where does our entertainment come from? Why? How is it shaped by the world around us and how is it shaping that same world?
This is the focus of The Entertainment. Each week, host Tom Knoblauch explores an element of our culture through conversations with creators and consumers of film, television, music, art, and more.