Heretic (Beck, Woods, 2024)

Written by Tom Augustine.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of watching The Remains of the Day as part of the British Irish Film Festival. An exquisite film from the Merchant Ivory stable, it features Hugh Grant in a small but potent role, the second go-round for him with Merchant Ivory post-Maurice. It’s thrilling, watching a young Grant just starting to find his stardom. It was before he would become the foppish, upper-class bad boy of the British rom-com, a two-decades long hold that practically defined the subgenre for an era. Of the megastars of the time, he was an intriguingly different kind of leading man – refined, willowy, clever and entirely uninterested in hitting any of the alpha male signifiers so many of his contemporaries were. His lack of rippling abs was part of his sex appeal. Now that his ability to command massive box offices has lessened, he’s entered into a fascinating, rangy second life – weirdo Grant is here, and we’re incredibly lucky for it. Both in front of and behind the screen, Grant oozes a laid back, razor-sharp charm that ensures he’s the highlight of anything he’s in (including every press tour). This was kicked off by his cunningly major work as the moustache-twirling villain of Paddington 2, a film no one thought would take hold of the zeitgeist until it did. Grant excelled because he wielded his persona as a bit of a high-class wanker in a winkingly self-assured role that asked for exactly that. His Felix Buchanan is one of the great comedic villains of the 2010s. In supporting roles in films to follow, he dove ever further into morally compromised parts – not only in television turns like The Undoing and A Very British Scandal, but having a ball in last year’s Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre and Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, two better-than-they-had-to-be films in which Grant shone.

Heretic finds Grant at his most utterly villainous, and yet it is no coincidence that it is also one of the most watchable, enjoyable turns of his career. Grant tears into the material with such gusto that the performance alone is enough to warrant the purchase of a ticket, even if the film around him doesn’t quite rise to meet his ability. The film is the latest feature from directors Scott Beck and Ryan Woods, whose careers thus far haven’t been much to write home about – the forgotten Adam Driver sci-fi vehicle 65 being the most notable – but who are most recognisable for their writing credits, which include A Quiet Place and the adaptation of Stephen King’s The Boogeyman (a film I’ve apparently seen, though I couldn’t tell you anything about it). What Heretic is most similar to however, in style and in tone, is the Netflix series Midnight Mass, which employed the same hamfisted religious rhetoric and engaging performances to create something equal parts cringingly unwieldy and (occasionally) inspired. 

Hugh Grant continues to expand his repertoire in his recent career resurgence, channelling his devilish charm into sinister roles, notably as the antagonist in this religious (or anti-religious) horror. His performance, alongside the impressive talents of newcomers Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher, elevates an engaging thriller that perhaps overestimates its own intellectual depth. 

The setup is this: two young Mormon girls (Chloe East of The Fabelmans and Sophie Thatcher of Yellowjackets, who between that show, her appearances in this, MaxXxine, The Boogeyman and next year’s Companion is becoming something of a rising scream queen) are doorknocking to spread the good word. They knock on the door of a recluse named Mr Reed (Grant), who welcomes them in, luring them into a test of faith of his own devising. Part of the pleasure of Heretic is following its many twists and turns down the rabbit hole, which I won’t spoil here, but suffice to say that Reed’s kindly-old-man act is hiding intentions of a very different nature. At its root, it’s a man-of-science man-of-faith duel with a religious horror bent, though those lines get muddier as the story continues. Where the filmmakers stand on the same question is harder to parse – they have tremendous empathy for our two heroines, through whose eyes the story largely unfolds (apart from an entirely unnecessary sidebar for the girls’ supervisor – bizarrely played by Topher Grace – trying to find out what happened to them), but give a hell of a lot of space for Reed’s point of view as well. This is where the film is most similar to Midnight Mass, in Reed’s longform musings on questions of faith, presented as something of a seminar to both the girls in captivity and us, the audience. It would be insufferable, Bill Maher-esque pontificating were it not performed by Grant, who’s weaponised charisma here makes it hard for us to look away.

Suffice to say, where the film actually goes and the answers it provides do not come close to matching the energy of the trio of core performances. Thatcher is strong as a girl with a hell of a lot of secrets, while Chloe East continues to demonstrate her star quality in a role that initially plays like the comic relief before deepening and coming into its own in the third act of the film. This is an A24 horror, where style trumps substance any day, and this is very much the case of Heretic, where everything looks great, but the questions it poses as deep and ponderous are more often than not of the eye-rolling quality. The cat-and-mouse thriller elements, similarly, are lacking something in the way of genuine terror – the film is best when it’s luxuriating in the mind games between Reed and his two captives. Horror, particularly lower-budget horror, is the ultimate space for young filmmakers to experiment with form and style, but in recent years those experimentations have largely eclipsed the nitty-gritty that makes a horror film really, genuinely frightening. Case in point – this year’s Strange Darling, a film that doesn’t so much owe Tarantino a debt of thanks as a cheque in his name. Heretic has enough going for it that it’s more painful, amateurish stylistic tics can be forgiven (labelling the cast in the credits ‘The Players’? Really?), but not enough to propel it past an entertaining, Friday night diversion.

Heretic is in cinemas now.

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