Yahoo Lifestyle The Ending Of "Heretic" Is Super Controversial, Here's What People Are Saying
In case you missed it, A24 recently released their latest horror flick, Heretic. Billed as a psychological horror, the film stars Hugh Grant as a creepy recluse who ensnares a couple of young Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) into his maze-like home of horrors.
Now, I'm not going to give too much away about how the movie plays out (however, you did click into a post about the ending of the movie), but here's the gist: Two young missionaries visit the home of a man named Mr. Reed (Grant) to sell him on joining their church...
...Although Mr. Reed seems very amiable at first, as things start to progress, the conversation turns tense. Mr. Reed, you see, is surprisingly well-versed in various religious scriptures and loves to "argue" about their different messages. After a few too many uncomfortable comments and questions from Mr. Reed, the women decide it's time to hightail it out of there.
The trouble is, Mr. Reed has locked them in. What plays out for the next 100-plus minutes or so is a series of horrifying "challenges" the women must face, all revolving around faith.
And what we're here to talk about today is the ending. Because, frankly, I have questions.
But before we get going, fair warning: Major **SPOILERS** ahead. So, if you haven't seen the film yet and don't wanna know how it ends, just bookmark this for later.
OK, so to recap the ending: After going through EVERYTHING, Sister Paxton (with the help of a surprisingly undead Sister Barnes) manages to survive a near-death experience. She searches the wooden maze/map of Mr. Reed's house to find an exit, escapes via a hidden window, and runs out into the woods. She stops, and a butterfly lands on her hand, and then it suddenly vanishes. The last thing we see is Paxton staring at her hand in a snow-covered field. 🤔
Desperate for some answers, I turned to the good people of Reddit for theories on that ending. Here's what they thought...
The butterfly was Sister Barnes:
"Sister Paxton said earlier in the film that if she died, she wanted to come back as a butterfly and land on her loved one’s hands. She sees a butterfly land on her hand. It leaves it open that this is Sister Barnes.
The movie spends a deal of time deconstructing religion as unproven and a farce and making compelling points, but then at the end, what Paxton experiences reinforces why people believe."
The butterfly was Sister Paxton:
"I think the poster of Dante’s Inferno tells us that Paxton in the snow at the end with a butterfly is the deepest and last ring of this hell. The coldest place is the deepest part of the puzzle. The butterfly is symbolic because of what was stated early on: Is it a man witnessing butterfly or butterfly witnessing a man or something like that.
Anyways I think that Paxton dies being stabbed in the throat, and is reincarnated as a butterfly."
The butterfly was just a symbol:
"I don’t get the people saying that the butterfly was the other girl. The butterfly was just a symbol of her faith. When it disappeared, the implication is that he (Reed) did open her eyes and take away her faith in the end."
Sister Paxton hallucinated the whole thing:
"Another explanation is that 'snow' (what the dying woman said) is simply the snow at the end because of the storm, and the butterfly vanished — so she was only hallucinating. I think that's the beauty of this movie; in that instance, you choose what you want to believe."
The ending is a simulation in Sister Paxton's head:
"Sister Paxton is dying on the floor, praying, Sister Barnes has been dead since Mr. Reed cut her throat, and the final scene is just a simulation of Sister Paxton's head. Like what the three of them discussed about the prophet's revelation, the brain just sees what it wants to see before dying.
In the case of Sister Paxton, she imagines some sort of divine justice: Her friend is miraculously still alive, just in time to kill the monster (Reed). Paxton manages to stop the internal bleeding of her cut and manages to get out of the basement, find a way out of the house, and finally sees a butterfly posing on her hand. As in a way to see the light, then, at the last second, disappears, breaking the illusion."
Finally, the truth (which is maybe less exciting) is that it's purposefully ambiguous. Here's what co-director/writer Scott Beck said to Business Insider about all the theories:
"I mean, we've heard them all from people taking it at face value, or that maybe this all really was a simulation, or that maybe the characters aren't really physically there at the end of the film. And what's great about it is those are all layered there to be intentional and totally valid. It's something that I think mimics the heart of the film. Everybody kind of intuits their own relationship to faith or atheism or existentialism and the big question of what happens when we die. These are the biggest questions that we all have in life, and there's no definitive tangible answer. But the pursuit of those answers is something that interests us greatly, and I think that's the heart of the film."
What are your thoughts? If you saw Heretic and have a theory about the ending (or agree/disagree with the ones above), let us know in the comments below!!! Let's talk about it.
