‘Heretic’ Review: A Handsomely Devilish Hugh Grant Scares Up A Storm In This Super-Smart Horror – Toronto Film Festival

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Hugh Grant has been doing a lot to dismantle his dashingly disheveled ’90s rom-com image in the last 15 years or more, but Heretic might be the film to blow it all to kingdom come.

Written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, a key part of the creative team behind the thoughtfully unnerving A Quiet Place franchise, Heretic is a genuinely different kind of horror, one that uses conventions from all across the genre — from the old dark house movie to the straight-up slasher flick — and puts them in the service of a playful script that makes some seriously subversive comments about the world today.

Sporting Jeffrey Dahmer specs and a cardigan he has described offscreen as “wanky,” Grant plays the seemingly genial Mr. Reed, but before we get to his lived-in but oddly forbidding cottage we meet the film’s leading ladies: Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East).

From their opening discussion of condoms, sex and porn, it is clear that, though they are both devout, they are probably a bit more questioning and self-aware than some other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, aka Mormons. “People think we’re weird,” notes Sister Paxton. “That South Park musical kind of makes fun of us.” Sister Barnes, however, is holding steady, and, though a storm is coming in, she insists the pair stop off to make one last house call, where Mr.