review: heretic

LET US PREY: HERETIC

Behold the timely arrival of a new A24 horror film as the nights start to get darker. It’s holding the cinematic door open for us, all we have to do is nose into the shadows of the rickety old house…just ignore that there’s only flickering candles and no real light. Slice of pie while we watch? I don’t mind if I do. 

Providing the chills in this creepy three(ish)-hander is Hugh Grant, starring in his first flick from this particular genre since Ken Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm, all the way back in 1988. The innocents knocking gingerly at his door are Mormon missionaries Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East, here with a mind to convert non-believers to the Mormon cause. 

It begins simply enough, the disciples welcomed by Mr Reed (Grant), who is doing his best, genial Brit schtick to great effect. It’s a dark, crumbling cottage with lots of strange doors and idiosyncrasies, but his wife is purportedly making blueberry pie in the kitchen. She never does seem to appear, though, much to the growing consternation of the holy sisters. 

As Grant’s religious cynicism and theoretical challenges start to become more intense, the girls' safety slowly recedes, and the weird, remote house becomes a kind of ecumenical escape room. Mr Reed has lured the girls here with the intention of skewering their beliefs, or at least scaring the girls into questioning their realities. 

The film is quite dialogue heavy, and you can almost imagine it as a stage play. There’s a lot of rhetoric in the first two acts, with some fairly predictable takedowns of organized religions. Grant has so much of a twinkle in his eye, though, that we get swept along by pure charisma. Thatcher and East are the foils, but they hold their own as the situation intensifies. 

The climax has the audience questioning if supernatural forces are actually at work, Grant toying with them relentlessly as the Mormon elders start to notice that two of their number are missing and a ticking clock starts. 

It’s a psychological horror as much as anything, and though some of the arguments are philosophically sophomoric, the performances and twists keep it elevated above schlocky. I’m enjoying late-career Hugh Grant almost as much as he evidently is. (PO)