Heresy / Didier Konings (2024)
The effects, performances, production design, and natural setting help Heresy punch well above its weight. At a lean 61 minutes, there isn't an ounce of excess on the frame.
We're plunged immediately into Frieda's (Anneke Sluiters) anxiety as she realizes she still hasn't become pregnant, and into her husband Hikko's (Len Leo Vincent) growing frustration. The pressure of the story begins there. Writer Marc S. Nollkaemper quickly introduces the community's rigid religious structure before releasing Gelo (played with genuine menace by Léon van Waas), a man imprisoned for violating the strict rules governing village life.
Unable to conceive, unwilling to accept sole responsibility for it, and terrified of what the consequences of childlessness might mean for her future, Frieda seeks answers beyond the church's authority. When she performs a fertility ritual at the edge of the woods, Gelo attacks her. She survives only because something ancient intervenes.
Condemned as an agent of evil, Frieda finds a faith of her own.
When villagers discover what happened in the forest and Gelo is found injured in the woods, suspicion begins to settle around Frieda like fog. Illness spreads. Misfortune follows. Attention turns toward old stories and older fears.
The legends speak of the Witte Wieven, mysterious women associated with healing, hidden knowledge, and traditions the church has spent generations attempting to erase.
The atmosphere grows more oppressive with every passing minute. The village's faith leaves little room for uncertainty, least of all in matters of fertility and obedience. Frieda's curiosity and independence become evidence of corruption in the eyes of religious authorities already searching for someone to blame.
What follows is less a battle between Christianity and paganism than between competing definitions of power and belonging. The forest, which villagers fear as a place of temptation and evil, gradually reveals itself as something else entirely. It becomes a refuge from a world that measures women by service, submission, and motherhood.
Like many folk horror films, Heresy leaves open an important question: are the supernatural forces real, or are they manifestations of repression, fear, and social control? The film wisely refuses to answer, or to judge the characters.
At its core, Heresy is less a creature feature than a story about religious persecution, infertility as social judgment, and the policing of women's roles. It shares DNA with The Witch, but its concerns feel rooted in specifically Dutch folklore and the uneasy relationship between Christian authority and older traditions that refused to disappear.
The characters often function more as embodiments of ideas than fully realized people. For viewers invested in atmosphere and symbolism, that will hardly matter. Those looking for richer characterization may find the film emotionally distant.
Frieda's former life in the village is effectively over long before the film ends. Her husband and the religious authorities have already judged her guilty, whether of witchcraft, heresy, or simply failing to conform to the role expected of her.
!Anneke Sluiters in Witte Wieven (Heresy 2024)
The villagers believe they are saving Frieda from evil. The film quietly argues that the evil was inside the village walls all along.
The final images suggest Frieda chooses the world of the Witte Wieven over the world she leaves behind. Rather than treating this as corruption or damnation, Heresy presents it as liberation from a society that viewed her as property, failure, and shame.
Perhaps Frieda joined the Witte Wieven. Perhaps she became one of them. Perhaps the supernatural events are simply a metaphorical rebirth and rejection of patriarchal authority. Or perhaps the old stories were true and the village had misunderstood the woods all along.
We can't know for sure.
Key scene
Spoilers below.
One scene in Heresy captures nearly everything the film is trying to say.
Frieda flees into the forest with Gelo in pursuit, carrying with her the weight of suspicion, shame, and expectations imposed by her village. Until this moment, the story has been dominated by sermons, whispered accusations, and rigid rules that measure a woman's worth through obedience and motherhood.
The forest changes the terms of the story.
The villagers fear it as a place of evil, temptation, and ancient superstition, but for Frieda it becomes something else entirely. As Gelo follows her beneath the trees, the balance of power begins to shift. The world beyond the village boundaries does not belong to men like him, nor to the church that claims authority over every aspect of life.
Whether the Witte Wieven are spirits, protectors, avengers, or manifestations of buried truths matters less than what they represent. In the woods, Frieda discovers refuge where she expected danger and agency where she had known only judgment.
The scene transforms the forest from a place of fear into a place of liberation.
Own it
My Letterboxd review