“So, you have to go doon… in order to go oot!”

One of my favorite things about one of my favorite films of the new millennium, 2012’s Cloud Atlas, was the casting of Hugh Grant in several villainous roles. Sure, Grant had played his fair share of cads over the years, but he’d never exuded pure evil in this way and it looked like a new dawn was breaking in his career. Grant’s villain era has been a thing of pure delight, from those Cloud Atlas baddies to Paddington 2’s deliciously vain antagonist and several prestige television villains, Grant seems to be having a great deal of fun on screen for the first time in a long time.

Writer/director duo Scott Beck and Bryan Woods saw their careers go into the stratosphere after penning 2018’s A Quiet Place, though their output since then has been mixed at best. However, they’ve written Hugh Grant yet another character to sink his teeth into and play with great relish. Grant gets to call on all those tools in his actor’s toolbox and use them in new and interesting ways in Heretic.

As Mr. Reed, Grant exudes equal parts charm, menace, and awkwardness when two Mormon missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), pay a visit to his home one evening looking to convert more souls to the LDS church. The sisters haven’t had much luck yet and desperation leads the sheepish Sister Paxton to ignore numerous red flags upon entering Reed’s home. However, the more streetwise Sister Barnes catches on to Reed’s many conflicting stories: He claims his wife is at home but we never see her, he tells them there’s blueberry pie in the oven but the candle on the coffee table is blueberry pie scented.

Little do these poor Mormon girls realize they’ve been ensnared in the web of a man no less zealous than they, just in his own belief system which he claims to be “the one true religion.” I won’t give away much more than that, only to say that both of our dear Sisters will have their faith challenged by fire.

If I’m being honest, I thought for certain that the film was a feature directorial debut. There are a number of flashy camera moves and perspective shifts that tends to indicate a “look what I can do” attitude behind the camera. Having now seen the film twice, I think these scenes—the aforementioned candle reveal, a shot that begins behind one of the Sisters before rotating down over her head—are actually just aiding in the disorienting feeling of the whole movie. I mistook it as flash for flash’s sake, but the camera moves seemed much more motivated the second time.

Both young actresses in the co-leading roles are excellent. Both Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East show a tremendous amount of vulnerability in the film, with East’s character given a more defined arc. They both more than hold their own with Grant, who is really doing career best work, and both of them very brilliantly play off the image of Grant as much as the actor himself.

Grant excels at playing a man so smart, so assured, and so self-satisfied that he can afford to be a cat, playing with his mice before making a meal of them. It’s always interesting, as an audience member, to find yourself agreeing with the vast majority of things the ostensible villain of a film is espousing. Reed’s extended lecture on the concept of “iterations” is perhaps the most concise explanation of the flaws at the heart of all organized religion I’ve ever seen in a film. Naturally he’s a flawed human villain and is therefore going to make mistakes that his own intellect could never possibly account for, but there’s an undeniable sense of enjoyment in watching him make his various arguments.

At the same time, Beck and Woods are smart enough to ally you with Sisters Barnes and Paxton from minute one, so the more emotional part of your brain will be pulling for them in this seemingly impossible scenario. The characters’ Mormonism is never played as a punchline by the film. Grant’s character certainly has a field day with the many contradictions at play in their religion, but the film never looks down on either of them for being faithful Mormons.

Heretic is one hell of a fun ride from beginning to end, revealing harsh truths about religion and its undeniably misogynistic origins without ever explicitly condemning people of faith. The problem with all religion is that it’s a human construct and therefore susceptible to the same flaws to which all humans are susceptible. Heretic reserves its harshest criticisms for the people in charge, the ones who wield the power, and seek to abuse that power at every turn. Those are the folks who’ve given the faithful a bad name, from the completely committed to the absolutely atheistic.

Reed eloquently points out that Belief and Disbelief are equally terrifying in their own way, and if nothing else, that seems to be the ultimate point of Heretic. Be wary of anyone selling you any kind of definitive answer about life, the universe, and everything. They are almost certainly overcompensating for the inherent flaws in their own belief system, whether they realize it or not.

Header image via IMDb