Distributor A24, founded in 2012, has carved out an enviable niche as one of the leading American independent entertainment companies, on par with the sustained prosperity of Searchlight Pictures — but without any of the protections and benefits of that mini-majors corporate ownership, by first 20th Century Fox and now Disney.
Everything Everywhere All At Once, which won seven Academy Awards and racked up almost $145 million at the worldwide box office, was the cherry on top of A24’s recent run of success, but the company has also carved out a very unique identity in the so-called “elevated horror” space, with releases like Midsommar, Hereditary, The Witch, Talk to Me and It Comes at Night telling stories that trade heavily on atmosphere and ambiguity.
The latest film in this vein is Heretic, co-written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the young tandem whose original screenplay for A Quiet Place helped launch their filmmaking careers out of the straight-to-video realm and into big-screen entertainments, first with 2023’s pandemic-delayed science-fiction action film 65, starring Adam Driver, and now this nicely crafted psychological suspense thriller, which makes excellent use of Hugh Grant in a villainous role.
Set in present-day Colorado, Heretic’s story centres on two young missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), who find themselves locked in an increasingly unnerving battle of wits with a man who seems to enjoy philosophical debate and debasement as much as if not even more so than any form of physical terrorization.
After a brief set-up that introduces the girls and establishes their dynamic a bit, Barnes and Paxton arrive at the home of a friendly older gentleman, Mr. Reed (Grant) — part of their assigned rounds to try and win over religious converts. While the girls are forbidden from entering an abode where another female isn’t present, Mr. Reed assures them his wife is inside baking some pies, and with a storm bearing down on the outside, Sisters Barnes and Paxton relent and settle down on a couch in his den, ready to talk about God.
Most of the rest of the first act unfolds as a sort of theological treatise, with Mr. Reed showing himself to be quite well-versed in Mormonism, and curious about the nature and depths of the girls’ religious beliefs. He presses them on certain issues, including their paths to the church, but comes across as charming enough in a way, aiming to put them (somewhat) at ease by constantly framing his mini-monologues in a self-effacing manner.
 
Eventually, though, the girls become increasingly uncomfortable when Mr. Reed can’t produce his wife. When they make an excuse about having to leave and go to retrieve their coats, he tells them that his front door is controlled by a timed lock which he can’t override, but they are free to leave the house via a back door. When the girls balk, Mr. Reed further explains his offer: one of two doors leading out he marks as being for believers in God, and the other if they now do not believe. After the girls make their choice, the dire nature of their circumstances come into sharpened focus.
Heretic benefits from a set-up that is at once very simple and also somewhat original. Beck and Woods also treat both their subject matter and characters with respect. After Mr. Reed is given a lengthy disquisition on overlapping elements within the major organized religions, Sister Barnes is afforded a shrewd retort that dismantles, point by point, some of the holes and willful omissions in Mr. Reed’s armchair philosophizing. This isn’t a movie which attempts to score cheap points by getting an audience to “side” with or against characters based on them operating from a place of faith.
A large part of the movie — its first half, in particular — is grounded in tension that is established on an intellectual plane. If Mr. Reed simply wants to destabilize the girls’ belief system, how far would he really go to do that, and what do myriad other red flags in fact really hint at?
It doesn’t really ruin anything to say that, in time, the movie’s psychological machinations become more physicalized, its horror more directly manifested in some bloodletting. The effectiveness of these turns will vary a bit more widely, depending on how much leeway and credit a viewer affords the movie for its tightly wound first half. For me, Heretic fumbled away some of its goodwill here; others not only won’t care, but will find the payoff cathartic.
The movie’s acting is also a big part of its success, though. East and Thatcher are apparently ex-Mormons themselves, which perhaps gives them a level of familiarity and comfort with some of the theological underpinnings in their dialogue. Their performances are each excellent, and the movie makes good use of a reversal in their dispositions and assertiveness. (Topher Grace also pops up in a very small role, as a church elder who goes looking for the girls in the storm.)
The biggest and most overtly enjoyable hook for Heretic, though, undeniably lies in Grant’s delicious performance. It’s easy to talk about his casting as being “against type,” given that the English actor came to international renown predominantly through romantic comedies.
But the truth is that his Heretic character, in a certain way, bears much in common with the often rakish, slightly stammering characters he brought to life in movies like Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Two Weeks Notice and Love Actually. The loquaciousness of Mr. Reed plays into Grant’s natural gifts as an actor — his ability to bend words, and put wry, complicated, or otherwise layered meanings on certain phrases.

Our Rating

Summary
There is nothing about the manner in which Grant plays the character that is physically imposing. That fact, plus the way the movie frames the deliberateness of his actions — like a boa constrictor tightening around its prey — makes Heretic more entertaining and unsettling than if it were aiming for more jump-scares straight out of the gate.