HERETIC

CONTAINS SPOILERS

I don't intend to bang on about this dismal Yorkshire-based horror cheapie (reportedly £30,000) for any longer than is strictly necessary. Put simply, if the makers can't be bothered to put in any effort, why the hell should I? For a horror movie it's incredibly tedious, it isn't scary, jumpy or creepy and only appears to have got its 18 certificate for needless swearing rather than grisly imagery (a bloody suicide apart); and for any genre of movie it's atrociously acted, poorly shot, glum, stupid, and it makes no sense. According to Horrornet's pullquote on the DVD box it's "The Exorcist meets Carrie", which is a massive insult to both films and isn't even true.

Heretic probably thinks it's taking on serious issues such as the sanctity of the Confessional and Catholic doctrine on abortion, using them as the basis for a character study of a priest facing the human consequences of his adherence to his faith. In reality it's over an hour of former priest Andrew Squires going mad and arguing with figments of his guilt-ridden imagination in a house where two of his ex-parishioners (stepfather and stepdaughter, sexually involved) killed themselves.

The ungraded video look (mysteriously framed at 2.35 like it's a real cinema film rather than a Handycam quickie) does the film no favours whenever the action takes place in the half-light, which is most of the time. Performances are of the reading-out-loud variety, the lead character is entirely charmless and uninteresting even when the film suddenly veers into slasher territory and he starts killing people, and the overwhelming impression is of a film set in which no-one had the faintest idea what the hell they were supposed to be doing. Heretic had eighteen Associate Producers, which must be some kind of a record.

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