The Absolute Yumminess of Hugh Grant as a giant heel: Heretic (2024)

 

There are few things I enjoy more than a good actor getting a chance to legitimately chew scenery. I say “legitimately” because there is nothing worse than even a great acting chewing scenery and watching a performance of tics, barking, and/or mugging. I’m not just thinking of Al Pacino here; I can almost guarantee you that every great actor has turned in a risible, stupid, flailing turn either out of boredom, arrogance, or they just needed the money. See also Nic Cage, but even in his hammiest moments, there’s such commitment, you kind of go down the rabbit hole with him joyfully. In that way, Cage reminds me of Vincent Price about whom a friend of mine once said, “he is the greatest ham, and I mean that as a compliment.”

What Hugh Grant does in Heretic is not that but not entirely not that. His line of attack is so sincere and delivered so earnestly (and filmed so artfully), that it is very, very far from ham. Besides, the script is too intelligent and this is a genuinely good film. Written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who wrote The Quiet Place, Grant turns in a rich performance as Mr. Reed, who claims to be interested in the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He requested a visit and two young missionaries show up, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) on a pleasant enough day turned into a raging blizzard after dusk. Clever, if on the nose.

The synopsis by now has made the rounds, but the gist is that Reed corners the two young Mormons and indulges in sea-lioning the shit out of them by acting interested and even recalcitrant and then, showing his true colors through pontification, gaslighting, questioning that is actually lecturing and didactic, and all around doing his best to scare the creeping bejesus out of them. Which he does.

The movie is structured in the beginning as a kind of dialog and then shifts to Reed taking center stage until a crucial moment where Sister Barnes picks up the role of lead protagonist. This continues until she’s taken out and it’s Sister Paxton’s turn to take up the slack in the back half of the film. It’s in that last half that the film runs out of steam and while not uninteresting, it ceases to be compelling and we’re in The Most Dangerous Game meets Saw territory minus the torture porn. Becks and Wood were obviously inspired up until that point. And you can see the wheels turning in the script writers’ heads. The direction remains on point and Grant and East continue to build on what’s been established but both actors are kept apart too much to return to the senes of threat or just plain dramatic tension that was present earlier.

The good news is that both Thatcher and East are strong, compelling actors and perfectly capable of playing to Grant, who gives them plenty to work with. 

Grant has a field day with Reed, who is a true churl and among the most pompous of asses, and of course, dangerous. We know this from the beginning when he informs the missionaries that there’s the metal in the walls, thus letting, at least those of us who know, that cell phones won’t work in the house. His threat is amplified when he informs them  that the front door cannot be opened, that it’s on a timer and that if they want to leave, they have to choose which door inner sanctum they’ll leave by. He labels one door “Belief” and the other “Unbelief.” Actually, we know how bad he is because he claims his wife is baking a blueberry pie and will joint them forthwith, but when he leaves the room, Sister Barnes turns the scented candle around to reveal a label that says, yep, “Blueberry.” 

Reed isn’t an idiot, necessarily, but he is, by turns, annoying and of course, visibly unhinged. We’ve all met guys like this; a major chip on their shoulder, live alone, and given a chance to talk or an ear to chew on, they seize that moment and feast. 

I don’t necessarily disagree with Reed’s points about organized religion, the failings of faith, the institutionalized inequality, the links to colonialism and exploitation, and so on, but none of what he says is novel nor is it presented in a manner that’s going to change either sister’s perspectives. Barnes is the more worldly of the two and unlike her colleague wasn’t born into the faith. She is, during her “chapter”, the more dominant of the two and really not going to let Reed get away with his shit. She pays the price for it later, after he calls out his phony “miracle” intended to destroy, we assume either or both women’s beliefs, but by that point, the movie has begun to wobble.

It succeeds on the strengths of its performances and all three turn in exceedingly fine work. And yes, yes, yes, it is Grant’s film. This is obvious because the film does lag when he’s not around and the emphasis shifts to Sister Paxton in peril. Chloe East is great, by the way, but absent the very palpable tension build up by both the characters and the actors earlier, Sister Paxton isn’t given much to do other than figure her way out of a sticky situation. For his part, Reed is carried away twice by an elder of the church come looking for the missionaries, played by Topher Grace. Grace doesn’t have much to do but show up and provide enough time so the plot can move forward and the girls can move do some planning and try to catch the elder’s attention. Naturally, this is to no avail.

I say “naturally” because by this point, the movie’s exhausted its ideas and principle conceit and we’re in more quotidian thriller terrain. Yes, the execution is still strong, but after Barnes is taken out of the narrative, the film could have dropped a good fifteen minutes and ended with much greater punch and much less dithering and stretching. 

You may have heard that Reed goes on about the Parker Brothers game Monopoly. I couldn’t resist; that’s how pompous Reed is. It’s not just “Monopoly”, it’s “the Parker Brothers game ‘Monopoly’”. Anyway, it’s the end of ramble you’d hear from your pseudo-erudite high school junior who’s just learned about analogies. Reed presents this idea that Monopoly is a debased iteration of the earlier boardgames “The Landlord’s Game” created by Elizabeth Magie. The idea and gameplay is exactly the same, though different design and the rules altered to affirm - instead of an indictment of usury and exploitation - the virtues of capitalism. Fine. Then he proceeds to go on about how Radiohead ripped off the Hollies' “The Air that I Breathe” for “Creep” and later, Lana Del Rey, piggy-backed on Radiohead for “Get Free”. His point is that just as Monopoly is an “iteration” of The Landlord’s Game, and Del Rey’s and Radiohead’s songs share the ur-text of the Hollies’ hit, all religions share a single origin and each successive iteration leads further and further away from the source. He then claims to have rediscovered the one, true religion and this is where the film loses the focus it so handily built up.

His blathering about iteration (with visual aids) was tedious and any freshman theology student high on decent weed would have been mildly amused, but what makes the sequence work is both Reed’s emphatic delivery (it’s here where Grant comes close to hamming but is too skillful for that - and it’s really unnecessary) and the concomitant fear on the girls’ parts that they now know they’re screwed. Past that point is when we devolve into the terror in the basement tropes.

To be clear, the last stretch does have surprises and some fine moments, but so much of it is filler and the tension resolves into tedium. You almost want Reed to show up and bloviate some more. East is able to keep us engaged but she’s undone by the contrivances of the script. No offense to either writer, but I would love to see what Jordan Peele could do with this conceit.

A bonus, though, is what an eye-popper the film is Chung-hoon Chung, Park Chan-Wook’s DP of choice, and who’s lensed tons of other stuff from It to Wonka most recently with a stop at Obi-Wan Kenobi along the way, brings properly oppressive color shifts inside Reed’s house, and extremely uncomfortable close shots contrasted with his uncanny knack for capturing the floating feeling that comes with being lost in a field of snow (as a composition, not literally lost in a snowbound field). Seeing Paxton shrouded by snow echoed the end of Oldboy, minus the creepiness of that movie’s finale. 

I can’t sing Grant’s praises highly enough. He’s leaned into the villainous expertly in this stage of his career. He was perfectly oily in The Gentlemen and did ham it up beautifully in Paddington 2 (you’re right, Nicolas Cage!), but this is a great example of the range we know he’s been capable of (seriously, see Florence Foster Jenkins,where he plays a perfectly complicated man) and frankly, more. His scene partners are also wonderful and both have proven themselves in Yellowjackets (Thatcher) and The Fablemans (East). Heretic isn’t resume padding for anyone here; the denouement aside, it would make a solid stage play.

I’ll also be looking forward to whatever Woods and Beck come up with. They have solid ideas, but I think they need someone to push back on their third acts. I wasn’t in love with The Quiet Place but I liked the premise and the performances. However, it takes more than strong premises and good performances to stick the landing.