Today we’re looking at a movie that is about exploring more than just meaning in culture but meaning in general. What is meaning? How do we know? What do we believe and why? This may sound more like the territory of an art-house move or prestige drama, but perhaps surprisingly it’s the focus of the new horror film written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods called Heretic, which is playing now in theaters. It follows a pair of Mormon missionaries who meet with a man claiming to be searching for information about their religion but seems to be up to something substantially more sinister. Further complicating matters, he’s played by Hugh Grant.

You might know Beck and Woods as the writers of A Quiet Place, which relied on its characters remaining as silent as possible to avoid the hyper-sensitive ears of a brutal alien race. Heretic, instead, is all about dialogue, a single location journey into the murky questions of faith, fear, and the meaning of life. How do you make a talky horror movie stay tense? How do you balance fears of the visceral with the existential? Can Hugh Grant’s charms be overridden by his possibly sinister intentions? How do perhaps unlikely influences, from M. Night Shyamalan to William F. Buckley, Jr. manifest on the screen? That’s the focus of today’s spoiler-free episode.

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30. Beck/Woods on ‘Heretic,’ Making Hugh Grant Scary, and the Meaning of Life