As the years advance and we all draw closer to our dotage, we should each of us try our very best to be a little more Hugh Grant. Having bumbled through his Richard Curtis period as the quintessential English gentleman, and arched a caddish eyebrow during his charismatic bounder years (Bridget Jones’s Diary, Paddington 2), Grant has now landed happily in what can only be described as his couldn’t-give-a-fuck era. He is clearly having the time of his life. From a D&D rogue (Honour Among Thieves) to a surly Oompa Loompa (Wonka) and even Tony The Tiger (Unfrosted), Grant’s output has been so chaotically diverse in recent years that it’s all but impossible to predict what he’ll turn his hand to next. Did anyone have ‘malevolent intellectual with an extensive library of leather-bound books and a convenient en suite torture dungeon’? No, neither did we.
As Heretic’s Mr. Reed, Grant is on superbly contradictory form in a role that is at once refreshingly new and yet entirely familiar. Reed is all awkward grins and self-effacing quips — vintage Grant through and through — as he welcomes two naive teenage Mormons into his home for a cosy chat about God while his wife whips up a blueberry pie in the kitchen. His occasionally unsettling asides — “There’s metal in the walls and ceiling, I hope that’s alright” — are delivered with such disarming dottiness that neither girl even registers them, or the unusually sturdy, self-locking door and lack of accessible windows. It’s only when his mask begins to slip, that they — and we — begin to see something far more chilling staring back through scholarly bifocals. Imagine Jigsaw if he’d enjoyed a side-hustle in fusty academia and you won’t be far off the mark.
Sophie Thatcher (Yellowjackets) and Chloe East (The Fabelmans) prove more than capable foils in this theatrical three-hander, their creeping horror as they transition from warmth to cool politeness to full-blown terror precisely judged. They’re not God-bothering cut-outs, either, the pair’s disparate personalities skilfully established via a short but punchy introduction beginning with an inspired conversation in which the (celibate) missionaries awkwardly discuss penis size, pornography and the abstract act of ‘sexing’.
An unapologetically intellectual chiller.
Written and directed by A Quiet Place and 65 scribes Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, Heretic’s strength — ironclad performances aside — is its meticulous dialogue, which sees the girls attempt to debate theology, consciousness and the tenets of faith with an increasingly deranged opponent. Meanwhile, Grant’s professorial blowhard stages delightfully pompous monologues — dripping with implied threat — in an attempt to dismantle the Mormons’ belief system using reason, historical precedent and a game of Monopoly.
The genius here is less in the rhetoric, though, than in the razor’s edge upon which this fraught confrontation is balanced. As the women gradually begin to suspect they might be in trouble, Beck and Woods construct a delicate cage of social norms and politeness that prevents the two Mormons from extracting themselves, weaponising good manners to deliver an unbearably tense first half that leaves you utterly exhausted as false smiles fade and tears well in the corner of formerly bright eyes. “Are we still pretending my wife is back there somewhere?” Reed chirps jovially, after regrettably informing the pair that there’s no way for them to leave.
Tension that tightly wound can’t be maintained indefinitely, however, and the film’s second half, in which the peril is far more overt, falls back upon more traditional horror beats, losing a little of the earlier edge. The finale also falters slightly, ultimately failing to deliver answers nearly as interesting as the questions it has posed. Meanwhile, gore-hounds and seasoned horror-heads may find all the pontificating and murderous foreplay frustrating — make no mistake, this is a very slow burn. But for those with a hankering for a more cerebral scare this Halloween, Heretic is an unapologetically intellectual chiller that’s as challenging for the mind as it is for the nerves.