Grimmfest 2024 – Film Review – HERESY (WITTE WIEVEN) (2024)

Beautifully crafted folk horror that holds a mirror to the patriarchal obsession of minimising and persecuting women through the conduit of theological mania.

A tightly knit medieval Dutch community becomes engulfed in religious fervour when the childless Frieda is accused of heresy. As the madness takes hold, she finds unlikely allies from a more organic spiritual realm.

Frieda is so desperate to get pregnant she is burying pots of her piss in the soil and constantly chiding herself. Everyone knows everyone else’s business in her tiny world, and she has allowed her toil towards motherhood to define her. It is far more likely her husband’s drunken impotence is perpetuating their childlessness; however, the corrupt patriarchal bubble that encases her will stop at nothing to protect male privilege.

The village butcher offers her a menu of stillborn piglets and rape, and the latter proves the catalyst for angering the transcendental fog demons that stalk the surrounding woodlands. The fact the creepy butcher frames his proposed sexual violation as ‘helping’ Frieda highlights the extent of the vile misogyny sanctioned by the church and also that he knows her inability to get pregnant is not her fault, and by definition of proximity, so do the other villagers.

This is just one of many fascinating nuances in the depiction of medieval drudgery at the rustic heart of Heresy. Consequently, the film begs a serious question by controlling its moral judgements in a contained, minimalist fashion. We can see precisely how Frieda becomes hounded and hurt in this stripped-back environment of self-loathing and unenlightenment, but what the fuck is our excuse for letting it happen in modern times?

Filmed and framed in a classical painting style, Heresy makes medieval misery look ravishing. The iconography is cold and sparse in direct juxtaposition to the visual flourishes of forest mysticism to come. Its meticulously curated Mise-en-scène may not reach Robert Egger‘s levels of fanaticism, but it is hypnotic in its rural authenticity. We feel immersed in the homespun hysteria, and when the visual effects, some shocking, penetrate the filth and foggy superstition, they are all the more impactful.

Don’t be fooled by the film’s short runtime of 61 minutes, either. It packs more thoughtfully composed thematic punches than many overblown examples seeking to expose the same ills. Heresy feels in the moment and vital, dispensing with heavy-handed posturing in favour of a narrative lyricism complicit with its period setting.

Didier Koning‘s dank and distressing mood piece is a brutal microcosm of misogyny that remains depressingly relevant in today’s landscape of toxic masculinity and theological terrorism. His extraordinarily intimate snapshot of a claustrophobic village in crisis channels both palpable anger and a cathartic message of hope.

Folk horror is enjoying something of a renaissance. As a society, we cower ever smaller under the spectre of futurism, and there appear to be crumbs of comfort in the simplified belief systems of yesteryear. Konings‘ film intelligently explores what that means in of the indelible link between lore and feminism—a link that connects us to ancestorial struggles and urges us to fight misogyny in the present.