Heretic review – religious horror with a suave, dapper and evil Hugh Grant

The remarkable second act of Hugh Grant’s career continues … or maybe third act, if we include the earlier period in which he appeared to withdraw from the movie romcom-lead frontline to concentrate on making brilliant investments in property and contemporary art, before returning as a lethally outrageous character actor and scene-stealer. Now Grant is making his horror debut (if we don’t include his appearance in Ken Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm from 1988) and does it with typical insouciance and cheek, starring in a verbose and disturbing chamber piece about religion from writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods; it feels as if George Bernard Shaw wanted to make a scary movie without songs inspired by The Book of Mormon.

Maturity and the chiller genre have added a certain something to Grant’s habitual mannerisms, on display as ever here: the sudden mischievous grin and the wide-eyed conspiratorial “eek!” grimace of mock dismay. He plays a donnish and bespectacled Brit called Mr Reed living in the US in a remote, eccentrically proportioned house. Like Grant’s ageing thespian Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington 2, this man is vain enough to keep a photo of his younger self about the place. Mr Reed has expressed a diffident interest in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so the Mormons have sent round two missionaries to discuss this with him; not strapping young men as would normally be the case in non-horror-film real life, but two twentysomething women. These are the innocent Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and the marginally more worldly Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher), who in the first scene reacts with unjudging sisterly amusement when Paxton recounts her shock at accidentally watching a porn film and expressing her earnest belief that the female lead’s unsimulated expression of despair proves the need to live a godly life.

Mr Reed is a model of avuncular kindliness and quizzical hospitality when these two appear on his doorstep; he invites them in, the door clicking firmly shut 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 suavely offers to bring his wife in from the kitchen. Paxton and Barnes eagerly assent, but there appears to be a strange and disquieting delay in this wife actually appearing.

As for Mr Reed, he appears oddly insistent on discussing the various forms of religion with them, his friendliness worryingly starting to wane as the steely glint behind his glasses increases. With various amusing supporting materials from popular culture, Mr Reed discourses on belief systems as iterations or theme-variations on earlier pagan or mythic forms and gets testy and thin-lipped when Barnes contradicts him. With hooded eyes, he asks these impeccably mannered young women if they still believe that his wife really does exist in another room, as he has assured them, and what is it precisely that makes them believe that? A need to survive, perhaps, in this world as well as the next? Heretic is gruesome and bizarre and preposterous, the third aspect made palatable by Grant’s dapper performance of evil.

• Heretic is in UK and Irish cinemas from 1 November and Australian cinemas from 8 November