Mark H. Rapaport’s new film, “Godhead,” is a master class in building tension. Shot in black and white with camera work that makes the audience feel like a voyeur uncovering wicked secrets, the film combines faith, sex, lies and discomfort in an unknowable dance between its protagonists.

The premise begins simply: a rural Catholic priest (Al Warren) is visited by two strange twins (Sarah Coffey and Kimball Farley), who look like an unholy mix of Die Antwoord, Grimes, and overcooked ravers. They believe they are part of a prophecy and need the priest’s help to fulfill it. They also have a gun. And the priest has a boy (Luke Speakman) who he seems to be keeping captive at home…

To say more would spoil the film’s twists and turns, which were enthusiastically received at their world premiere at Montreal’s genre-focused Fantasia Festival this week.

Rapaport, whose well-received 2023 debut “Hippo” also premiered on Fantasia, spoke with Variety about his choice to make another black-and-white film, how “Godhead” takes aim at corrupt authority figures and leaves audiences with challenging questions.

What inspired you to develop this story?

I always find that in life I come across authority figures in a way that seems unfair to me. I’m often too nice to people and I think I have a bit of second-born gullibility. As I get older and hopefully become a father, I try to get rid of that. I think in this film I was able to point out that feeling of being aware of the hypocrite or the manipulator. From childhood to adulthood, you have your religious figures, you have your family, you have your bosses. I am always a very trusting person and so I discovered that there is real horror in that. This film, while framed as a sort of Hitchcockian thriller, is actually a canvas for exploring those frustrations.

With a movie like this that has a twisting plot, how do you balance disseminating information to the audience without over-explaining and giving them easy answers?

It’s a difficult tightrope to walk. I hope I can do this successfully by staying with the characters first and being able to feel with them, and writing the script from their intentions and their heart, and not letting a horror movie plot take over the larger emotional core. Of course, we go there and we go to dark places and we twist and turn, but I always try to bring it back to the characters. I can always do better by finding that humanity.

There are many dark moments in this film. How did you determine how bleak or hopeful you ultimately wanted your work to be?

It’s funny, there was another version of the ending where it was a huge, obvious F-you to all these evil characters. I was talking to Al Warren, who plays the priest beautifully and with so much real emotion, and it made me think about the end time. Without giving it away, he said, “Let’s think about where this could go if you, as a director, practiced forgiveness,” and I found that in doing so I ended up with a much more horrible ending than if I had hit his character. I think there is also something disturbing about forgiveness, in the sense that the ultimate manipulation is to forgive the manipulator. I wouldn’t care if the audience felt like maybe the characters made the wrong decision in the end. That just begs the question, because the film at its core is a question for the audience, less than an answer. In my previous version, I tried to give the answer and it just wasn’t satisfactory. So it was a real exercise to recover that sword that the director wields. That’s where we end.

What was the creative decision to shoot in black and white instead of color?

It was my instinct from the beginning just because my first film was in black and white and it was a very fun and beautiful little film. People loved black and white. It felt like a different world. And so it started like, “Well, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” My brain thought in black and white. But, of course, you need the narrative to deserve black and white. When I started writing the script, I couldn’t see it any other way. I really liked “The Lighthouse” by Robert Eggers. He makes a lot of great movies, but this trio… wanted to set us in some sort of timeless world. I felt black and white was an effective way to do it.

In addition to the beauty of the shadows and the bad mood that it is able to convey, there is its relationship with the themes of good and evil, right and wrong, truth and lies. I had a coming full circle moment writing the script where there’s a gray area that I put in there, because even though it’s in black and white, it potentially ends in a gray area, which to me is the most horrible area of ​​all. We all want to know: are we black or white? Are we right or not? When I was able to think of it as a spectrum and not just black and white, a whole new visual language opened up for me.

Alief represents “Godhead” for worldwide sales while it seeks distribution.

Watch the trailer for “Godhead” below.