I think actor Hugh Grant has had quite a successful reinvention of himself in recent years. Sure, he first hit it big as this sort of generally bumbling leading man in various romantic comedies, but these days, he seems to be using his acting gifts to take on much darker roles, often playing sketchy if not outright criminal characters in various projects, sometimes using his rom-com charisma to make the characters seem even sketchier. He’s been a villain or at least an antagonist in movies ranging from Paddington 2 to Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and even a couple Guy Ritchie movies. That brings me to Heretic, a horror movie/thriller where Grant gets to play basically the main antagonist in a battle of wits between himself and two young Mormon missionaries. That sure is something of a change of pace for the actor.
And yes, this is the other movie I missed when it first came out that I am catching up on.
Young Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) are out looking to convert people to the Mormon faith in a mountainous part of the United States. Barnes converted to Mormonism and has had some success baptizing people while the more naive-seeming Paxton is quietly certain of her faith but also seems to be new to the world of proselytizing. On their list is one Mr. Reed (Grant), a seemingly charming man who the young women get to just as a winter storm is starting to hit the area. He invites the two in to explain their faith to him, something he seems genuinely interested in, but when the two explain that they need another woman present, he says his wife his in the kitchen baking a blueberry pie. A little relieved, the pair enter. That’s when things go bad.
Reed, it turns out, already knows a great deal about the Church of Latter-Day Saints, having in his possession a Book of Mormon more heavily annotated than anything Paxton or Barnes might have. But the thing is, there’s something just a little bit off about the man, and the two missionaries soon begin to suspect that he doesn’t have a wife, the front door to the man’s house won’t open, they have no cell phone reception, and the storm outside would make getting out of there difficult even if they could open the door. What follows is Reed’s challenging the two young women in his house, a place with a lot more secret rooms and religious paraphernalia than one might have guessed, and Reed’s insistence that he has found the one, true faith is going to put both women’s own faith to the test. Can the two get out of this man’s house with their lives and faiths intact?
I said above that Grant has had an excellent latter part of his career by playing disreputable types and villains, and that is certainly the case here, but there’s a bit more to it than just that. Grant plays Reed in a manner more akin to his old rom-com leading roles. He makes goofy faces, never raises his voice above a conversational level, and is at worst maybe a little rude in his dealings with the pair. What makes the character dangerous is not so much coming from his personality but the character’s more subtle belligerence. He thinks he has all the answers, and he’s playing a game, but he’s not someone who seems the slightest bit dangerous at first glance. He’s more dangerous for what he doesn’t say than what he does. And for all that the character claims an intellectual high ground, Barnes’s own experience looking into different faiths actually means she can somewhat see through him, and her experiences are more worldly than Paxton’s, seeing as how Paxton was raised in the church.
All that adds up to what is basically a very solid thriller. The plotting for the movie is pretty much perfect, and writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods–who also helped create the first A Quiet Place movie–make the movie brisk, tense for most of its run-time–it does slack off a bit in the last act as these movies often do–and the characters are smart. There are some very clever camera moves and nothing in the script seems to be a waste. Really, this is just an all-around good thriller with a most unconventional threat in a story that actually has something to say about religion, and not just that it’s all a lot of bunk. There were a number of good surprises to be seen up to the end of the movie, and I was glad to make the trip to the multiplex for it.
Grade: A-
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