Heretic’s biggest mystery: was Hugh Grant’s character’s wife ever real?

In Heretic, Hugh Grant becomes Mr. Reed, a withdrawn yet disturbing individual whose fixation on religion takes a horrific turn. The film is set mostly in his remote house. The viewer is lured into a suffocating psychological snare where religion and zealousness intertwine in deeply unsettling ways. However, apart from the gore and grotesque religion, the film asks a more profound, spine-chilling question: Did Mr. Reed even have a wife?

The puzzle is first crafted when the protagonist uses a blueberry pie-scented candle to lure two missionaries that he hopes will walk directly into his home, under the pretext that his wife is baking something while her husband is in the adjacent room. His presence outside the room becomes less believable as time goes by. The wife continues to remain unaccounted for, rendering any suspicion about Mr. Reed’s behavior insidious actions become clear, and cruel fantasies, devoid of a wife, gradually turn into his shell of deceit.

Nevertheless, creating ambiguity has always been the intention of the creators. The case, without references, draws absurd conclusions but holds Mr. Reed's faint mention of the altar—his wife made it a home to them. He hadn’t been a genius, and yet—the blurred boundaries of the undiscovered claim might, somehow, shed light on the man and illuminate inhuman, unforgiving reality: a collapse into insanity.

The illusion of domesticity in Heretic

The tale Mr. Reed tells concerning his wife’s life starts off with a calculated lie, one meant for upper-level edification, to earn the trust of the missionaries knocking at his door. These religious zealots operate under some strange rules; a woman must be present during house visits of a man to the house visits. What’s Reed’s fix? A candle that smells like a freshly baked pie, which suggests that his wife is home. It’s a quiet act of deception that sets the tone for everything that follows.

This precocious deceit raises a daunting question: If Mr. Reed has gone to such lengths of conjuring the wife’s presence, what in the world is the truth? The truth is a set of “prophets” being held captive in his basement — the man is a sadistic puppet master, and it becomes obvious that the choice of manipulation is indeed his favorite weapon. In approach, the concept of a wife itself is probably not a recollection but a fantasy, to make this thing seem more human than he actually is.

A glimpse into grief or a constructed myth?

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Even with all of his lies, Reed's claims about his wife constructing the home altar do come off as different, less rehearsed, and far more intimate. It does not seem to have a clear functional motive in the context of his dealings with the missionaries, nor does it help any of the claims he makes that are thoroughly warped. It could mean that Reed's wife, were she to exist, was an intensely pious woman and perhaps even fuelled his devotion, turned distorted religious fervor.

Alternatively, the part of the wife's altar tale could be equally as plausible as Reed’s other stories in Heretic. If she does not exist, then the lie is an addition on top of his persona. A widowed man driven into religious frenzies and infused with zeal for the divine. If that is the case, then the terrible things he does to people aren’t the only focus of Heretic, if there is any focus at all. The disturbing reality is that the real, horrific root of the novel is his self-sustained deception.

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