One of the year's A24 horror movies received a mixed response from audiences in spite of winning over critics. A24 is an independent entertainment company that has risen to prominence throughout the 2010s and become more or less synonymous with an offbeat brand of low budget cinema. Their releases encompass many genres and levels of critical and commercial response, including the sci-fi action movie Everything Everywhere All At Once, which won the Oscar for Best Picture, and the dystopian war drama Civil War, which is their most expensive project with a budget of $50 million and grossed $126.1 million worldwide.
A24 horror movies are among the most notorious of the company's output. Many have been successful with both critics and audiences, including Talk to Me, Ti West's X trilogy, and Ari Aster's Hereditary and Midsommar. However, others have earned the company a reputation for misrepresenting dark dramas as having more horrific elements than they truly do, with projects that have received this blame - fairly or unfairly - including The Witch, It Comes at Night, and The Blackcoat's Daughter.
Heretic Is Leaving Audiences With Mixed Feelings
Critics Have Made It Certified Fresh On Rotten Tomatoes
Heretic reviews from audiences have been more mixed than those from critics. The new horror-thriller, which stars Hugh Grant as a man who challenges the faith of a pair of young Mormon missionaries who he traps in his home, was beloved by critics, earning a Certified Fresh 93% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. This is the highest score earned by an A24 horror movie in 2024, beating out I Saw the TV Glow (84%), MaXXXine (72%), and The Front Room (42%).
Heretic
is already the second highest-grossing of the four movies, with its opening weekend of roughly $10 million beating out
The Front Room
's $3.2 million run and
I Saw the TV Glow
's $5.4 million, but not
MaXXXine
's $22 million.
In spite of its overwhelming critical reception, Heretic's audience response has been more mixed. On CinemaScore, audiences have given the movie a C+, which is about par for the course for an A24 horror movie (Hereditary also received a C+), but still quite middling compared to other new horror releases including The Substance (B), Speak No Evil (B+), Smile 2 (B), and Terrifier 3 (B). On Rotten Tomatoes, the audience score that has been aggregated during its debut weekend is also a significantly more mixed 78%.
Our Take On The Heretic Audience Response
The A24 Horror Movie Is Still A Success
While the Heretic release behaved like many other A24 horror movies by having a worse audience reaction than its critical reception, the movie is still performing quite well. Its Rotten Tomatoes audience score may not be high enough for it to be Verified Hot, but it is still far beyond the 60% threshold past which a movie is considered Fresh. Additionally, its opening weekend of more than $10 million is most likely more than enough for it to leg out to earning a profit given its slimmer budget, so it is hardly suffering in the face of its mixed reaction.
Two young women of faith are drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse after seeking refuge in the house of a mysterious and unsettling man. As they navigate a labyrinth of psychological and supernatural horrors, their beliefs and survival instincts are pushed to the limit.
Custom image by Brennan Klein
English (US) ·