The ending of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods horror movie Heretic comes as a surprise: Its a silent, transcendent moment after a tense, dialogue-heavy story. (End spoilers ahead, as the headline suggests.) A seemingly benign man, Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant), traps two young female Mormon missionaries in his house to test their faith and explain his own. He proclaims hes going to show them a miraculous resurrection, but his miracle turns out to be fakery and manipulation.Mr. Reed murders one of the missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) but late in the movie, she seems to miraculously resurrect long enough to kill him, saving her partner, Sister Paxton (Chloe East). The movie ends with Sister Paxton escaping the house, staggering through its grounds, and falling. In the penultimate shot, she sees a butterfly land on her hand, and regards it with wonder its a callback to a line earlier in the movie, where Paxton said that after death, shed like to be resurrected as a butterfly, and visit her loved ones.The implication is that shes seen the promised miracle after all, and that now, her partners spirit is visiting her in a new form. But the final shot of the movie shows the butterfly isnt there after all. What does it mean? Polygon asked writer-directors Bryan Woods and Scott Beck (A Quiet Place), who discussed their take on the ending, what they want people talking about after the movie, and how Joe Dirt helps explain it all.[Ed. note:This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.]Polygon: Im sure a lot of people will be trying to unpack and debate Heretics final moment. For me, it felt like a statement about faith and belief Sister Paxton believes Sister Barnes spirit is with her, and takes comfort from it, so it doesnt matter whether thats objectively true or not. Can you can speak to what you meant by the contrast between those final two shots?Scott Beck: Without giving our own direct feeling on the moment, what youre talking about, that its reflecting upon the statement of belief that is the sweet spot. We screened the movie a few times at AFI, and Fantastic Fest, and Toronto, and whats been really engaging for us is to hear many people have multiple interpretations of what that ending means, and how that intersects with their own sense of self, and their own sense of how they view the world.Sometimes, days later, we hear that theyve reflected upon it in a different way. And that, to us, is kind of the beauty of life not be stuck in stasis, or stuck in the certainty of This is the only way to view the world around me, or to view a relationship or non-relationship with faith, belief, disbelief. To keep your eyes and ears open and interact with the world in a way that is both reactionary and proactive, but youre always kind of being fluid in the way that you view the world.Bryan Woods: Its a very difficult thing to talk about, because we make the movie, we spend three years trying to put this conversation in a cinematic context, and were timid about coming in with our thoughts about what we were trying to say. Then it reduces that experience to a soundbite.Beck: Its an ending by design to leave it with the audience. Thats really it. The ambition is to deliver questions, and not to necessarily deliver an answer, because more than anything, this to us would be a take-home movie.Woods: I know that theres this feeling people get to the end and theyre kind of curious, are we coming out on belief or disbelief? Which is it? Which is maybe too binary for what were talking about. But one of the things were certainly discussing in the film is a critique of certainty, and a critique of in life, whether its religion or politics or even moviegoing, this feeling of, I know whats right, and youre wrong. We hate that, because that kills conversation, and then no dialogue exists.Our taste ranges from lowbrow movies to highbrow movies. Were all over the map. I love a good lowbrow, broad comedy like Joe Dirt, but if somebody came up to me and said, I know that Joe Dirt is the greatest movie of all time, I would be like, Youre terrifying me. Thats scary to me.Beck: But if they said its the worst movie of all time, I also would disagree with that, too!Woods: That would also be scary! So then you apply that to politics, and you apply that to discourse and religion, and therein lies one of the things were attempting to get out of this.Beck: I feel like the internet has made human beings seem dumb, but thats not the case. Were all very complex intellectual people that dont share 100% of the same views, and we cant all be lumped into one group. And thats what I feel like culture has cultivated right now. And thats a shame. And I hope theres a way to get over this hump of where we are currently as a society .Woods: And its hard, because of the digital aspect of social media. Were not present together as people. Were on screens, and were commenting, and it just dehumanizes the conversation. And thats part of the problem, I think as well.Whats the ideal way you want people to walk away from this movie? What do you want them to be talking about or thinking about?Beck: I hope theyre thinking about their own relationship to their ideologies. Whether it is coming from an atheist perspective or a perspective steeped in rich belief, I hope its a conversation, a conversation that echoes what Brian and I had over the last almost 30 years of friendship. Why have we come to the conclusions we came to? To us, the relationship with these great existential questions is ever-evolving.Thats the fun of life the mysteries of life, the pursuit of questioning what is around you, and how to be a good human being, and how to interact with the world through that lens. So we hope that there is a lot of introspection, that people can engage with it at that level.Woods: And talk about it. Were at an interesting point in culture certainly American culture, but I am sure theres a kind of global feeling about this too, where its hard to talk about things. The internet dramatizes sides. Youre either here or youre there, and fuck everybody else. When the reality is, were all probably somewhere on the spectrum.And the idea of being able to have a civil conversation about anything has almost completely disappeared. So one of our hopes was to dramatize a conversation about religion, a thing that is difficult, that youre almost not supposed to talk about dramatize it to the most extreme level, so that any conversation that follows the film will feel civil and cordial by comparison to the experience that hopefully the audience just had.And if we can translate a cinematic conversation to a conversation that people have at dinner after they see the film, for us, that would be the equivalent of a home run. That would be really special. Even if they just talk about religion for five minutes after seeing the movie, that would be a win as well.Heretic is in theaters now.