Out of Fantastic Fest, Gregg Bishop’s The Heretiks mixes the camp of Hocus Pocus with the sinister bite of The Witch. Accomplished screenwriting team Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski (2022’s Hellraiser, The Night House) forge their pens in blood and scrawl a horrifying witchy tale about relinquishing pain and the price of sacrifice on a gnarled ancient tree in the woods. It’s a satisfyingly grisly and emotional story unafraid of piercing your heart with violence so wonderfully disturbing. When it comes to teen horror, there’s a tendency to shy away from crossing certain boundaries, but Collins and Piotrowski shamelessly dash over lines with the fervor of a thousand demons. Where its obvious predecessors leave acts of nastiness mostly PG or just off-screen, The Heretiks relishes in the suffering for the audience’s astonishment.
Ada (Josie Juliette Wert) drops out of college and returns to her hometown. Her little sister Mabel (Ava Mae Seidensticker) gives her a hard time, pleading to spend time together. It’s Halloween, and after a bit of coercing, Ada agrees to take Mabel and her classmate Wesley (Luke Speakman) trick-or-treating. But she has to make a stop at a friend’s party first; she broke up with Ryan (Spencer Brabham) over text before heading off to university and needs to apologize, and rightfully so. While she gets sucked into her own drama, Mabel and Wesley head off into the night and hit up the rich part of town. They always have the best candy. On their winding late-night raid, a coven of witches sets their sights on Mabel for their Samhain ritual to bring about the end of human existence.
Mabel and Wesley put up on hell of a fight, but their silly mortal strength can only stave off the inevitable. Cai (Kimberly Epstein), the heretik who has abandoned the coven, proves to be essential in their survival. The witches, led by the mischievous Neve (Tess Williams), track the kids to their house where Cai performs a blood spell to safeguard them inside. Collins and Piotrowski build lived-in characters that are quite easy to root for, and Seidensticker and Speakman carry the film with tremendous acting courage. Wert is likewise a torrential force, erecting Ada into a worthy companion to Cai.
Once the film switches for a one-location folk-horror hootenanny, The Heretiks soars into the midnight air with an unapologetic cackle that will delight as much as it frightens. Bishop dresses the story with crisp, yet moody, direction that feels both classic and contemporary. It could easily live next to Dark Harvest and Cobweb in tone, aesthetic, and hellish attitude. The film doesn’t just make mince meat of its characters, but it also throws themes of lost childhood innocence, regret, and making amends into a blender and turns it on high without the lid. Collins and Piotrowski add in terribly upsetting moments that crush the heart into powder.
Gregg Bishop’s The Heretiks possesses all the hallmarks of cult classic. The characters are devilishly charming; the story perfectly disturbing; and visual style nothing short of cinematic. And it never feels like it’s holding back. Quite the opposite. It’s deliciously vexing and shocking.
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