The Heretics

In this low-budget Canadian supernatural horror, ill-feted Gloria (Nina Kiri) is kidnapped by a Satanic cult not once but twice. As a teenager, she was used by ghoulishly masked cultists as the centrepiece of a demonic ritual that climaxed in a mass suicide. Gloria, strangely, was left alive. Five years on, though, a surviving cult member captures her once more, and chains her up in a cabin in the woods. Gloria starts to go through an unnerving transformation, while her desperate girlfriend (Jorja Cadence) tries to find her. With some serviceable body horror effects, slick direction and solid acting, The Heretics neatly inverts a couple of genre tropes, even while shamelessly wallowing in quite a few others. Despite some contrived twists, dubious character motivations and a questionable LGBTQ+ subtext, this is schlocky, better-than-average possession fare.