Heretic review – Hugh Grant is a hor­ror natural

There was a time when the lat­est Hugh Grant project was about as high­ly antic­i­pat­ed as a prostate exam, but the era of Did You Hear About The Mor­gans, Mick­ey Blue Eyes, and The Rewrite now feels like a bad dream as the actor has been charm­ing and sin­gu­lar – mak­ing only the rare mis­step – for the past decade. No longer shack­led to the altar of unin­spired roman­tic come­dies, he’s final­ly ven­tured into hor­ror (for the first time since his small part in Ken Russell’s cult clas­sic The Lair of the White Worm) with Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ Heretic, which proves utter­ly inge­nious, show-steal­ing casting.

The film – com­ing a year after Beck and Woods’ dino sci-fi megaflop 65 – fol­lows two young Mor­mon mis­sion­ar­ies who are sent to a remote home on a stormy after­noon to con­vert Mr Reed (Grant) to the church of Jesus Christ Of Lat­ter Day Saints. He’s recep­tive to their vis­it, invit­ing them in to talk to him about all things gold­en tablets, mag­i­cal under­wear and polygamy, reas­sur­ing them that they don’t have to break church pro­to­col by being alone with a man as his wife is in the room next door bak­ing a blue­ber­ry pie. But as the con­ver­sa­tion edges for­ward, the tone becomes more antag­o­nis­tic, and it becomes clear that his inten­tions towards them are more nefar­i­ous than tempt­ing them to a slice of sug­ary dessert.

Though the trail­er and mar­ket­ing sug­gest a Jig­saw-esque series of tri­als ahead, the truth is Heretic is a nau­se­at­ing­ly tense cham­ber piece that is only spar­ing­ly vio­lent, instead min­ing hor­rors from two young women trapped by their own social con­di­tion­ing and polite­ness by a das­tard­ly fig­ure who delights in watch­ing them squirm.

Sophie Thatcher’s Sis­ter Barnes is the more world-weary and cyn­i­cal of the two, com­ing to the role with fierce intel­li­gence and a sense of sim­mer­ing PTSD, while Chloe East plays the sweet Sis­ter Pax­ton, whose kind­ness means she is con­tin­u­al­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed by both her col­league and her cap­tor. While the pair show­case for­mi­da­ble tal­ents, Heretic is undoubt­ed­ly the Hugh Grant show. He stages elab­o­rate metaphors around board games, bran­dish­es a scent­ed can­dle like a grenade and sings Radiohead’s Creep to deli­cious­ly deranged effect.

The nar­ra­tive deflates once the gloves well and tru­ly come off; Grant’s sweet­est spot is when his sadism lies behind the thinnest veil of polite­ness, and while the final act has some impres­sive­ly fucked up moments, they are more pro­to­typ­i­cal hor­ror flick than the inven­tive the­o­log­i­cal tor­ment that came prior.

There are plen­ty of holes in the log­ic, both the­o­log­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal, when it comes to Mr Reed’s schemes but those seem insignif­i­cant when you are watch­ing a for­mer­ly under­uti­lized flop­py-haired heart­throb hav­ing such a whale of a time. There’s no expla­na­tion as to why he is British, and his propen­si­ty for adopt­ing a new accent to speak a sin­gle phrase only lends to his omi­nous edge. As an actor we’ve spent decades watch­ing evolv­ing, going all the way back to the ear­ly 90s peri­od dra­mas and Richard Cur­tis shmaltz, it’s gen­uine­ly thrilling to see Grant shift into some­thing so entire­ly malev­o­lent and unabashed­ly camp. Heretic may seek to rock your faith in the divine, but it tru­ly for­ti­fies one’s belief in Hugh Grant.