TThe remarkable second act of Hugh Grant’s career continues… or perhaps the third act, if we include the earlier period when he seemed to retreat from the film-rom-com frontline to concentrate on doing brilliant investments in real estate and contemporary art, before returning as a fatally outrageous character actor and scene-stealer. Now Grant makes his horror debut (if we don’t count his performance in Ken Russell’s 1988 The Lair of the White Worm) and does so with typical indifference and brutality, starring in an extended and disturbing chamber piece about religion from writer directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods; it feels like George Bernard Shaw wants to make a scary movie without songs inspired by The Book of Mormon.
Maturity and the chiller genre have added to Grant’s usual mannerisms, which are on display here as always: the sudden mischievous grin and the conspiratorial “eek!” with big eyes. grimace of mock dismay. He plays a donnish and bespectacled Brit named Mr Reed, who lives in the US in a remote, eccentrically proportioned house. Like Grant’s aging stage actor Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington 2, this man is vain enough to keep a photo of his younger self nearby. Mr. Reed has shown a tentative interest in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so the Mormons have sent two missionaries to discuss this with him; no young men tied up as would normally be the case in real life without horror movies, but two women in their twenties. These are the innocent Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and the slightly more worldly Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher), who in the first scene reacts with open-minded sisterly amusement when Paxton talks about her shock when she accidentally watched a pornographic film and her sincere conviction expressed that the female protagonist’s unsimulated expression of despair proves the need to live a godly life.
Mr. Reed is a model of fatherly kindness and mocking hospitality when these two appear at his door; he invites them in, the door closing firmly behind them, and offers blueberry pie. When Paxton and Thatcher politely inform Mr. Reed that they cannot be alone with him without another woman present, he kindly offers to fetch his wife from the kitchen. Paxton and Barnes eagerly agree, but there seems to be a strange and disturbing delay in this woman actually appearing.
As for Mr. Reed, he seems strangely stuck on discussing the various forms of religion with them, his friendliness worryingly beginning to wane as the steely sheen behind his glasses increases. Using various amusing supporting materials from popular culture, Mr. Reed speaks of belief systems as iterations or thematic variations on earlier pagan or mythical forms, and he becomes testy and thin-lipped when Barnes contradicts him. With eyes closed, he asks these impeccably mannered young women if they still believe that his wife really exists in another room, as he has assured them, and what exactly is it that makes them believe that? Perhaps a need for survival, both in this world and the next? Heretic is gruesome, bizarre and ridiculous, the third aspect made palatable by Grant’s neat execution of evil.
