Hugh Grant weaponises his trademark charm to play a provocateur holding two young Mormon missionaries hostage in this new horror film.
Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) call at the home of Mr Reed (Grant), who claims to be interested in their religion. Through increasingly tense conversations, he mocks their beliefs and these escalate in intensity until the women fear for their lives.
Writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who wrote A Quiet Place (2018), earned a reputation for combining thrills with emotional depth.
Heretic takes place mainly in one house, albeit in different rooms. And, like A Quiet Place, it is a masterful blend of thriller and mystery elements with horror.
The suspenseful drive of the film comes from the vagueness surrounding creepy Mr Reed’s ultimate motive for trapping the women in his home. He is the predator in this cat-and-mouse game, but there is a uniquely gentle quality to his sadistic goading.
The contrast between his easy-going demeanour and increasingly menacing behaviour gives the scenes an arresting, off-kilter quality.
Much of the tension derives from what the audience knows about Grant, the actor. Over a long career, he has played a succession of charming, but flawed men. Heretic asks viewers to imagine William Thacker from the romcom Notting Hill (1999) as a homicidal maniac. – John Lui