Heretic review: a must-see thriller with a killer lead performance

Heretic is a house of cards. It is a playful, thoughtfully crafted construction that — much like its talkative antagonist — is ultimately full of air. All it would take is one strong gust of wind or a single weak link to cause Heretic to fall completely in on itself. It needs something strong enough to protect itself from that kind of weakness in order to stay standing, and Heretic thankfully finds exactly that in Hugh Grant. A leading man of a million different, yet similar shades, Grant has spent the past 10 years of his career gleefully tap-dancing out of step with the largely rom-com rhythms of his earlier career in order to play roguish villains, cheating husbands, murder-obsessed politicians, and even a snarky, orange-skinned Oompa Loompa.

He has cemented himself as one of the most reliable scene stealers of this decade and the last, but outside of a few TV roles, Grant has found his recent successes in supporting parts. Heretic breaks that pattern by giving Grant the leading role he deserves at this stage of his career — one that allows him to use every tool in his toolbox. In Heretic, a deliciously mean helping of religious horror that feels like a contemporary Grimms’ fairy tale, he is both the attractive middle-aged professor and the witch hiding the human-sized oven in his kitchen. He is also a stammering, affable, twinkle-eyed, and hunched-shouldered man of immense charm who frequently resembles the generation-defining rom-com star viewers once knew Grant to be.

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Heretic uses that familiar, good-humored charm to astonishingly great effect. Here, it is employed not to woo viewers or a female love interest, but to disarm the two young women, a pair of naive Mormon missionaries named Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), who come knocking on his door one rainy evening. They do so in the hopes of converting Grant’s reclusive, approachable Mr. Reed to their Mormon faith, and are initially delighted when their proposition is met with open arms and a curious mind. Not long after Reed has led them into his home on the promise that his wife is baking a blueberry pie in the kitchen offscreen, however, do Paxton and Barnes begin to suspect that they’ve walked into a more sinister trap than they could have ever imagined.

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The film builds to this turning point with confidence and considered style. Its opening scene, a conversation about condom sizes between Barnes and Paxton, marks the low point of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ screenplay and plays up its female leads’ obliviousness about the mechanics of sex to a laughable degree. The scene’s dialogue and the visual pun waiting at the end of its first shot clumsily foreshadow the darkly funny comedic spirit that Woods and Beck go on to inject far more effectively throughout Heretic‘s second and third acts. Fortunately, the writing and directing duo don’t wait long to bring Thatcher and East’s missionaries face-to-face with Grant’s manipulator. They dedicate just enough minutes to the awkward drudgery of Barnes and Paxton’s missionary work for Reed’s excitement about speaking with them to act as an initial, effective jolt to the system.

Heretic clicks into sharper place once Reed begins deliberately pushing against his guests’ religious convictions. It’s in this sequence that three things become clear: The brilliance of Grant’s casting, the crackling potential of Beck and Woods’ dialogue, and the precision of Chung Chung-hoon’s cinematography. Beck and Woods’ previous directorial efforts, which include 2023’s sci-fi film 65, didn’t announce them as filmmakers with a particularly powerful visual style. In that respect, Heretic is a marked improvement. Many of the thriller’s most unnerving scenes, including Reed’s first quasi-interrogation of Paxton and Barnes, involve long monologues and back-and-forth exchanges. Beck, Woods, and Chung elevate these sequences with well-timed close-ups and revolving pans that add a dynamism they might otherwise lack, communicate the underlying malevolence of Grant’s villain, and establish an uncomfortable intimacy between Heretic‘s three leads that is reinforced by the inescapable nature of Reed’s labyrinthine home.

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Once Barnes and Paxton come to the horrifying realization that they’re trapped, Grant’s Reed is given all the permission he needs to shed one skin for another. He exchanges his friendly, neighborly facade for that of a wannabe lecturer who gives deranged, rehearsed speeches that compare the creation of pop cultural artifacts like Radiohead’s Creep and Jar-Jar Binks to the iterative origins of the world’s “modern” religions. There isn’t enough substance in what the man says to prompt much compelling reflection on the part of viewers, and the same is true of Heretic‘s entirely surface-level, obvious thoughts on religion itself. The way in which the film reaches its ultimate points is, however, always immensely entertaining. Beck and Woods, who broke into the mainstream by writing the original script for A Quiet Place, have an understanding of dramatic escalation and tension that makes their work thrilling to watch whenever it is on full display.

The duo also knows when to provide relief, and in Grant they find a performer capable of transitioning seamlessly between pitch-black comedic levity and dramatic intensity. As Reed, Grant transforms his iconic, boyish smirk into a conniving cheshire grin — one of Hollywood’s most charming rom-com smiles becomes a toothy window into the predatory nature that his character does his best to mask beneath courtesy and cleverness. Opposite him, Thatcher brings a steadiness to Barnes that stands in stark contrast to the frazzled desperation of East’s Paxton, and that helps the two characters emerge as worthwhile counters to their maniacal captor. While Beck and Woods never make the mistake of ignoring the comic absurdity of Heretic‘s story and its villain’s games, the duo do take the danger that Reed poses to his younger female prisoners seriously enough to give the film the nerve-shredding edge that it and its set pieces need.

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Where Reed’s life-and-death games ultimately lead both falls short of the initial expectations that Heretic sets and exceeds them. There is very little actual testing of Barnes and Paxton’s faith involved in their tormenter’s plans, and the conclusions that Reed offers about the “one true religion” are elementary at best. At the same time, Heretic digs deeper into a kind of devious depravity that is genuinely shocking at times — and not least because of how unwaveringly Beck, Woods, and Grant commit to subverting the latter’s usually endearing screen persona. The logistics of its final act only make sense within the film’s cockeyed reality, and several of its final twists threaten to fall apart under the lightest interrogation.

The superficiality of Heretic‘s ideas does little to hamper the film’s effectiveness, though. This is a thriller told with exceptional, gripping control and a near-perfect mastery of tone. It unfolds at such a propulsive, confident pace that it leaves little room for you to do anything more than feel the visceral effects of its filmmaking and the increasing claustrophobia of its interior world as the full, suffocating cruelty of its villain’s plan is revealed. With three strong lead performances and one, in particular, that dares you to look away, Heretic also grounds its story in an enthralling battle between a trio of very different, but similarly capable performers.

It is both ironic and miraculous that the one thing Heretic accrues early on even more than tension and dread is faith, if not in the potency of its ideas, then in its ability to keep your heart rate up and your eyes glued to its many, shadowy images. Heretic proves your belief in it to be well-founded — even as it explores all the way to its last frame whether or not the devout faith practiced by its missionary protagonists takes away more from them than it gives. Heretic, for its part, offers about as much across its 111 minutes as you could hope — or pray — for. It’s one of the most vicious and exhilarating thrillers of the year.

Heretic is now playing in theaters.