Heretic review – Hugh Grant is a horror natural

There was a time when the latest Hugh Grant project was about as highly anticipated as a prostate exam, but the era of Did You Hear About The Morgans, Mickey Blue Eyes, and The Rewrite now feels like a bad dream as the actor has been charming and singular – making only the rare misstep – for the past decade. No longer shackled to the altar of uninspired romantic comedies, he’s finally ventured into horror (for the first time since his small part in Ken Russell’s cult classic The Lair of the White Worm) with Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ Heretic, which proves utterly ingenious, show-stealing casting.

The film – coming a year after Beck and Woods’ dino sci-fi megaflop 65 – follows two young Mormon missionaries who are sent to a remote home on a stormy afternoon to convert Mr Reed (Grant) to the church of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints. He’s receptive to their visit, inviting them in to talk to him about all things golden tablets, magical underwear and polygamy, reassuring them that they don’t have to break church protocol by being alone with a man as his wife is in the room next door baking a blueberry pie. But as the conversation edges forward, the tone becomes more antagonistic, and it becomes clear that his intentions towards them are more nefarious than tempting them to a slice of sugary dessert.

Though the trailer and marketing suggest a Jigsaw-esque series of trials ahead, the truth is Heretic is a nauseatingly tense chamber piece that is only sparingly violent, instead mining horrors from two young women trapped by their own social conditioning and politeness by a dastardly figure who delights in watching them squirm.

Sophie Thatcher’s Sister Barnes is the more world-weary and cynical of the two, coming to the role with fierce intelligence and a sense of simmering PTSD, while Chloe East plays the sweet Sister Paxton, whose kindness means she is continually underestimated by both her colleague and her captor. While the pair showcase formidable talents, Heretic is undoubtedly the Hugh Grant show. He stages elaborate metaphors around board games, brandishes a scented candle like a grenade and sings Radiohead’s Creep to deliciously deranged effect.

The narrative deflates once the gloves well and truly come off; Grant’s sweetest spot is when his sadism lies behind the thinnest veil of politeness, and while the final act has some impressively fucked up moments, they are more prototypical horror flick than the inventive theological torment that came prior.

There are plenty of holes in the logic, both theological and ideological, when it comes to Mr Reed’s schemes but those seem insignificant when you are watching a formerly underutilized floppy-haired heartthrob having such a whale of a time. There’s no explanation as to why he is British, and his propensity for adopting a new accent to speak a single phrase only lends to his ominous edge. As an actor we’ve spent decades watching evolving, going all the way back to the early 90s period dramas and Richard Curtis shmaltz, it’s genuinely thrilling to see Grant shift into something so entirely malevolent and unabashedly camp. Heretic may seek to rock your faith in the divine, but it truly fortifies one’s belief in Hugh Grant.