‘Heretic’ Movie Review: Hugh Grant Gets To Be A Devilish Debater In Smart, Tense Religious Horror Film
Photo from A24
From Jeremy Kibler
Religious faith gets weaponized in Heretic, a deviously smart and ruminative cat-and-mouse chamber piece with a theological horror bent. Writer-directing team Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (who made their debut with 2019’s criminally underseen Halloween gem Haunt) begin with a doozy of a scenario, like a cautionary fairy tale that should be told in The Book of Mormon (the scripture, not the irreverent Broadway show). Tension is then milked for all it’s worth out of an iconoclastic debate over forever-baking pie with a politely sinister yet slyly funny Hugh Grant.
Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) make their way through Colorado in hopes of gaining new members at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Last on their canvassing list is Mr. Reed (Grant), an English gentleman who warmly greets the young women and invites them in out of the rain as a storm brews outside. They keep reiterating that they would need Mrs. Reed to be in the room, but she seems to be too preoccupied in the kitchen baking a blueberry pie. Mr. Reed is charming and inviting at first, but as Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton try converting him, he has other plans, like trapping them and testing their faith while determining the “one true religion.”
An about-face from the filmmakers’ first script (A Quiet Place), Heretic is talky but always tense, propelled by a three-person conversation. Beck and Woods take their viewers to church without being preachy to the viewer, but it’s up to them to make it all visually interesting, which they do manage with clockwork precision, dread, and masterful cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung’s elegant, dynamic camerawork. There’s also no film without Phil Messina’s production design, particularly the labyrinthine design of Mr. Reed’s home, which Chung pulls back from at one point in a dazzling overhead shot as if it were a maze.
Making the effortless switch from devilishly lovable leading man to an outright devil, Hugh Grant brings a false sense of security as Mr. Reed. Chilling yet still charismatic and a little cheeky, Grant relishes playing a chatty, beguiling, and persuasive puppet master. Somehow, Mr. Reed is never just a cardboard bad guy, but a religion debunker who can make a long-winded Monopoly comparison, bring up fast food in context, and put on a Jar Jar Binks impression.
Sophie Thatcher (The Boogeyman) and Chloe East (The Fabelmans) are magnetic and terrific, too, and never play Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton as generic horror-movie pawns. As the film amusingly opens on the missionaries’ endearing conversation about magnum condoms and porn, both actresses are able to efficiently convey two distinct personalities. Respectively, these two young women are tough and sweetly naïve, but how they evolve and try gaining the upper hand throughout the film is constantly surprising.
The boil of a payoff is still satisfying, but Heretic is most effective and unnerving in the simmer, keeping us guessing as to what Mr. Reed has in store for Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton. Beck and Woods know just to play with expectations, a blueberry-scented candle likely to never receive the same dread-inducing reveal as it does here and “The Air That I Breathe” by The Hollies made into a memorable recurring needle drop. Their carefully structured script never really telegraphs where it’s headed; even a possible rescue by a church elder, played by an initially unrecognizable Topher Grace, feels obligatory but doesn’t go as expected.
Despite the finale getting a little too stretchy in how much the viewer’s own disbelief needs to be suspended, Heretic should convert anyone into fearing their neighbor in a comfy Mr. Rogers sweater.
Rating: 4/5
Heretic hits theaters on November 8, 2024.
