A witch or an apostle, the Devil doesn't care

[sovay]

I appreciate this review of Heretic (2024) informing me in so many words that I am not the film's target audience:

What's scarier than believing in a higher power that controls our every move? Not believing in a higher power at all [. . .] The film is a distillation of thousands of years of the same basic narratives into barely different religions that have shaped human history.

Tell me that the writer-directors are at least culturally Christian without telling me etc. because I don't find atheism remotely frightening, nor is it incompatible with the traditions of the ethnoreligion to which I belong, and if you believe that all human religions across history are barely differentiable from one another, when you get your head out of your Joseph Campbell have I got bad news for you. I am unironically glad that Hugh Grant is having such a good time in his horror debut, but theologically this film sounds stressfully reminiscent of every gotcha conversation I have tried to avoid with the kind of new-or-not atheist who sure sounds hella Christian when filtering the discourse through the lens of belief and treats Mithraism or the Baʿal cycle like a mic drop. I hope it's more complicated. I am not encouraged by summations like:

Why do we believe what we believe? Is it just because we've been told to do so? Or is there something beyond the many books that Reed claims to have read? "Heretic" is a horror movie about some of the most soul-rattling ideas in history, including not just that there's nothing after death but that everything we've built our lives on has been a lie.

By now I am of course prejudiced against the use of the first person plural in this review, but aside from the fact that the dreadful truth beneath a cushion of lies is rather a horror staple, I am not convinced that the loss of faith is such a shockingly universal experience, even among people who have left the religions they were born into. tl;dr I leave this perennial post here and I'll wait for the filmmakers to explain to me how Buryat shamanism and Yoruba Ìṣẹ̀ṣe are totes interchangeable.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Ahahahaha now I want to watch this movie to mock it (but not give them any money) I spent maybe 15 seconds thinking of becoming that kind of culturally Christian atheist until 1) my Jewish friends expanded my universe 2) my friends of other kinds of Christianity than the Fundamenatlism of my childhood expanded my universe and 3) the sociobiological "White Man Is The Apex Of Human Rationality" philosophy of those atheists drove me away.

I do so love your analyses.

[sovay]

Ahahahaha now I want to watch this movie to mock it (but not give them any money)

I have confirmed with spatch that if he's on box or on door at the Somerville and it isn't a sold-out show, he will let you in. He is conspicuous by his Brooklyn Cyclones baseball cap and his consistent masking and the pictures I have posted of him over the years.

I spent maybe 15 seconds thinking of becoming that kind of culturally Christian atheist until 1) my Jewish friends expanded my universe 2) my friends of other kinds of Christianity than the Fundamenatlism of my childhood expanded my universe and 3) the sociobiological "White Man Is The Apex Of Human Rationality" philosophy of those atheists drove me away.

Richard Dawkins is definitely the atheist version of a shande far di goyim. I appreciate beyond words that you dodged that bullet.

I do so love your analyses.

Thank you!

[flemmings]

Richard Dawkins is definitely the atheist version of a shande far di goyim

Thank you. That made me laugh out loud for the first time since Tuesday.

[teenybuffalo]

I was coming here to express a similar sentiment! High-five!

[sovay]

Thank you. That made me laugh out loud for the first time since Tuesday.

I'm glad!