Heresy
What if “choose the bear” wasn’t a viral hypothetical but a horror movie’s entire thesis?
The modern witch film has been quietly rewriting its own rules. For decades, you had two options: cackling hags out to damn souls, or hysterical women burned at the stake by men who mistook fear for righteousness. Then Robert Eggers dropped The VVitch in 2015, and suddenly the question flipped. What if the old faith isn’t the enemy? What if the thing in the woods offers something the church never could?
Saïd Belktibia’s Hood Witch tangled that thread further, dragging the nature-versus-religion conflict into the age of capitalism and complicating who the real villain is. Now comes Didier Konings, a Dutch concept artist whose filmography reads like a blockbuster highlight reel—Wonder Woman, Doctor Strange 2, Thor: Love and Thunder, Stranger Things—stepping into the director’s chair for his folk horror debut. The result is Heresy (original title Witte Wieven), a lean sixty-one-minute medieval nightmare about a woman named Frieda who discovers that the forest might be safer than the village.
Heresy premiered at the 2024 International Film Festival Rotterdam before tearing through Fantastic Fest, Sitges, Screamfest, and Grimmfest. It arrives on Shudder in May 2026, which means American audiences are about to meet a horror film that swaps Eggers’ slow-burn Puritan dread for something rawer, faster, and arguably more savage. But don’t mistake speed for shallowness. Konings, a visual effects artist for major blockbusters, knows exactly when to show you the monster and when to keep it just outside the frame. The result is a film that feels bigger than its modest television budget—and smaller than its ambitions, in the best possible way.
Anneke Sluiters plays Frieda, a woman whose body has become a public failure because she can’t conceive. The village blames her. The priest sanctifies the blame. And when the local butcher, freshly released from a cage for what the community chooses to forgive, chases her into the forbidden forest, something old and patient and un-Christian decides to take an interest. What happens next isn’t a possession. It’s a conversation.
A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden
I’m really enjoying the evolution of the witch movie. There was a time when you either had 1) evil witches out to damn the souls of all in their view, or 2) evil men damning innocent women with claims of witchcraft. But lately, there seem to be other ideas. Like, what if choosing witchcraft over religion is actually the best option?
Credit Robert Eggers for getting the push started with his 2015 masterpiece The VVitch. Saïd Belktibia’s Hood Witch (2023) tangled the natural female versus patriarchal male threads with the complications and complicity of capitalism, further blurring right from wrong. And now Didier Konings wonders whether the morally superior choice is to disappear into the woods to commune with the fae.
Konings sets his latest, Heresy, in a medieval Dutch village. Frieda (Anneke Sluiters) awakens to find she’s started her period again. Still not pregnant. Sluiters’s despondent look tells you all you need to know.
Heresy suggests the forest holds something older than the church—and for Frieda, that older thing is worth the heresy charge.
In fact, Konings relies on gestures, glances, and weighty expressions to tell a lot of his tale of religion versus nature, male versus female. Heresy runs barely more than an hour, but it doesn’t feel skimpy. You learn what you need to know when Sasha (Nola Elvis Kemper), her throat and writes purple with bruises, is required by priest and community to forgive Gelo (Léon van Waas) as they release him from the cramped wooden cage in the village center. And again, when Hikko (Len Leo Vincent) chastises Frieda for referring to her barrenness as “their problem.”
And when Frieda has no choice but to run from Gelo into the dark, forbidden forest, who would blame her for wanting to return?
Heresy is not heavy on horror, but what Konings delivers is memorable. Like the balance of the film, the horror is primarily implied. But when we do see something, it’s quite something.
As is Sluiters’s performance. She covers an enormous emotional range with very little dialog to support her. Her chemistry with the ensemble and her physical performance, particularly the way every indignity hangs on her expression, are captivating. Her rage, when it finally breaks the surface, is glorious.
Heresy probably could have used a little more time to fill out its story, but at 61 minutes, it certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome. Konings gives you what you need to understand why women choose the bear.
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