Sometime in the last handful of years, so sneakily that few of us seemed to be paying attention, Hugh Grant suddenly turned into a brilliant character actor. Though he’d appeared in a variety of roles throughout a career that began in the ‘80s, he’d long been best known as the cutely stammering heartthrob (or slyly ogling cad) of rom-coms throughout the ‘90s and the aughts. Now, just watch him as he casually steals movies like “Paddington 2” and “Wonka” seemingly by raising an eyebrow, or makes something strange and haunting from a supporting role in the HBO series “The Undoing,” or takes an overly talky horror movie like “Heretic” and turns it into a master class in how charm turned inside-out becomes thoroughly creepy.
“Heretic,” written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, might have been a real slog in the hands of a lesser actor, and even with Grant on board it sags mightily in its final act. But oh, that first hour. Grant plays Mr. Reed, a whimsically cardigan’d older gentleman who answers his door when two young Mormon missionaries knock: naive Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and slightly (but not much) less naive Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher). He invites them in, offers them pie, listens eagerly at first to their anxious spiel. “Are you ready to hear about our heavenly father’s plan for you?” one of them chirps.
Not so much; if only Sisters Paxton and Barnes had noted the ominous gray skies, the weirdly small windows of the house, the “wife” who’s all too obviously nonexistent. Turns out Mr. Reed has his own ideas about religion, and about how to thoroughly freak out unsuspecting young women. As they descend into a sort of Dante’s Inferno — seriously, you have never seen a house with so many creepy-looking doors and staircases — Grant unfurls a tapestry of menacing smiles, elegant diction, offbeat imitations (he does a rather good “Jah Jah Binks”), unexpected song (“Creep” by Radiohead, of course) and handsome terrorizing; and he gets away with it far longer than any actor has a right to. “Heretic” needed some trimming, but Grant’s performance is just the right size.
‘HERETIC’
2.5 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for some bloody violence)
Running time: 1:50
How to watch: In theaters
