Heretic (15) |Close-Up Film Review
Cast: Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East
Review by Carol Allen
He is about to be subjected to an effort by two young Mormon missionaries to enrol him in their God squad. Mind you, he has invited them for his own nefarious reasons. But when we first meet Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), Sister Barnes in particular is one of those irritating young women who never stop talking. Literally. Her partner in religion can hardly get a word in edgeways. But Barnes is about to meet her match in Mr. Reed.
When Reed opens the door to them, he is the epitome of the Hugh Grant style diffident English charm we’re used to, welcoming them warmly with assurances of a wife who will be joining them soon with blueberry pie. Oh yeah? However the young women’s efforts to Mormonise him don’t stand a chance against what turns out to be his long and well informed lecture on how all the religions of the world, not only the Mormon church, are based on a series of delusions older than any so-called God. It’s actually rather entertaining for an agnostic like me. Barnes’s yak is no match for his. However once he started getting the Monopoly box and other games out to further his argument, I began to fear this was going to take a truly original slant on the horror film, in which the villain bores his victims to death.
Fear not though, or rather fear now, as eventually he stops banging on like an over enthusiastic university professor with a bee in his bonnet and we get onto more traditional horror stuff, as the girls are invited to choose between two doors, one marked Belief and one marked Disbelief. But they both lead to the traditional cellar of horror movies, where we meet a strange creature who might or might not be the absent wife – warning, girls, don’t eat the blueberry pie. And we’re on the gory road to uncovering the rest of Mr. Reed’s wicked plan.
Writer/director team and longtime friends Scott Beck and Bryan Woods created one of the most original and gripping horror films in years with A Quiet Place. This one isn’t on the same level but it does provide a lot of amusement in Grant’s performance. Unremittingly jovial at first, we later get echoes of the nastiness under the charm that he used when playing disgraced politician Jeremy Thorpe, plus some of the broader strokes used as the wickedness of Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington 2.
And when fighting for her life while overcome with fear and a dark cellar, even the irritatingly verbose young Sister Barnes pipes down and becomes more sympathetic.
