Reviews
‘Heretic’ Review – Hugh Grant Steals A24’s Verbose Theological Thriller [TIFF]
It turns out that the effervescent but neurotic wit and charm that made Hugh Grant an enduring romantic lead actor translates quite well to horror. His disarming villain, an impish type who delights in psychological and theological warfare, elevates Heretic, the latest from A24 and writer/director duo Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (65, Haunt). The self-contained chamber piece gets hung up in its basic lecture on religion, but the smart casting, powerhouse performances, and an infectious sense of humor ensure that it remains engaging.
Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes (The Boogeyman‘s Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) ponder typical teenage things, like condom sizes or whether they fit in with their peers, before they continue to work their way down the assigned list of potential converts. That brings them to the door of Mr. Reed (Grant), a warm, neighborly type who invites the pair inside just as a storm arrives. With promises of homemade pie and a safe female presence, the girls reluctantly enter, unaware that Mr. Reed has a devious, dangerous game in mind to test their faith.
Heretic hinges upon its performances. The elegantly simple, stageplay-like setup strips quickly trap Barnes and Paxton in Mr. Reed’s small, cozy parlor, where both parties engage in rapid-fire, dialogue-heavy exchanges of life and faith. Mr. Reed bides his time regaling his captive audience by playing devil’s advocate at first, gently testing the boundaries of their beliefs before luring them further into darkness. Grant makes easy work of chewing scenery; this is an unflappable, cunning foe excited by the savviness of his vulnerable prey. The more they push back, the more amused he becomes, wrapping the audience around his fingers even as he spews endless monologues of entry-level theology, complete with pop culture examples for even easier digestion. The use of Monopoly as a visual representation earns a hearty chuckle, even if it is a bit too obvious a metaphor for Grant’s wily game-playing puppeteer.
Thatcher and East make for formidable opponents, at least when it comes to the battle of wits. They both instill rooting interest, even when making obvious missteps toward doom. That speaks to their screen presence and natural charisma, considering the verbose ideological ideas explored at length aren’t all that profound or stimulating. It’s not the twisted game of chess that’s interesting here, but rather the moves each player makes and why.
Philip Messina’s production design also works in the film’s favor. Mr. Reed’s deceptive little home reveals itself piecemeal, peeling back an insidious house of horrors befitting of the gamemaster. The darkly lit corridors and dingy, fraying corners add depth and dimension to a surface-level narrative, lending foreboding gloom and twisty surprises. In a dialogue-focused feature that opts for dread over scares, Messina’s production design does the heavy lifting for the horror.
That’s not to say that Heretic doesn’t have a few surprises in store, but those moments are fleeting and undermined by its superficial societal and religious observations. Belief or disbelief becomes a moot question by the film’s end, and logic stumbles the further Beck and Woods corner their characters. Their claustrophobic cat-and-mouse game is reliant on its fiery exchanges; it’s a verbal sparring match of a movie. While those exchanges are never as profound as they claim, the three performers manage to keep you in their grip all the same. Heretic is a movie that’s ultimately carried on the back of its villain, and Grant’s daffy, amused portrayal of Mr. Reed might be enough to make you a convert.
Heretic made its world premiere at TIFF and releases in theaters on November 15, 2024.
Books
‘Scary Movie Night’ Review: A Hitchcock-Themed Thriller Full of Juicy Twists But Not Much Else
A secluded mansion. A group of friends each harboring secrets. A party built around one woman’s love of Alfred Hitchcock. These are the ingredients laid out to begin Scary Movie Night, the sophomore novel from Miranda Smith and follow-up to her breakout debut, Smile for the Cameras.
They’re all, standing alone and taken together, very promising ingredients, and when Smith starts to bounce all those secrets and all that seclusion around with a little murder in the mix, they make for some juicy plotting. But fun twists and macabre themed party nights do not a thriller make. There is fun to be had here, but for all its reliance on classic horror tropes and the films of a master of cinematic suspense, Scary Movie Night never quite finds a way to become something more.
Movie blogger and influencer Tippi (yes, she’s named for Tippi Hedren from The Birds) is going through a rough patch. Her upcoming marriage was just called off, and she’s planning to hit the Cannes Film Festival then travel the world as a newly single woman, even shifting her career focus from movies to travel in the process. Her friends Ava, Marlowe, and Constance are supportive, but they also know it might be the last time they see Tippi for a while, so master party planner Ava comes up with the perfect sendoff: A themed scary movie night party, complete with costumes, hosted at the elegant estate of Tippi’s grandmother, Marmee.
Marmee, you see, has her own history with the glamour of Hollywood, and even has a private cinema set up in her mansion. It’s the perfect venue for the perfect night, at least until Tippi starts receiving vaguely threatening notes from her ex, and the first body turns up.
See what I mean about all the ingredients being there? This book starts with so much promise, particularly when guests turn up for the party and reveal their various movie costumes. There’s so much to chew on, and Smith wastes no time diving directly into the drama of it all. The book moves primarily through Tippi’s first-person perspective, so we get the lowdown on her friends, their various relationships, the quarrels that have defined previous social interactions, and much more. It’s a series of rich veins all tapped at once, and it feels like the book is genuinely going somewhere quite fun.
Here’s the thing: The book does go somewhere quite fun; it just gets there in a way that I found both frustrating and often unfulfilling. The characters aren’t defined by their choices in the book so much as they’re defined by what Tippi tells us about each of them, and while the notion of Tippi as an unreliable narrator is key to the plot, her supporting cast never really gets a chance to sit up and exist as anything other than archetypes in her head. The dialogue doesn’t help matters in this regard, and I kept finding myself wishing one of Tippi’s friends would just seize the narrative, just for a moment, so I’d get some sense of these people beyond the broad brushstrokes of the protagonist.
Which brings us to the issue of Tippi as the narrator in the first place. Like the Hitchcock blondes on which she’s clearly modeled, we’re meant to learn about her through her choices, and constantly question whether or not she’s made the right ones. Why did she leave her ex with a wedding looming? Why is she changing career paths? Why does she have to be talked into her own going-away party? How she reacts to these things, and what she’s really after, will be what defines her, but here’s the thing: Tippi, for all her Hitchcockian layers of plotting, never steps forward as a fully formed character. Like the Hitch films playing in the background during the party, she’s more like a suggestion of a character than a person.
Writing first-person present-tense is tricky under the best of circumstances, but doing it when your protagonist is meant to be harboring secrets of her own is especially challenging, and it just…never quite entirely works here, and drawing very direct parallels between her and Hitchcock’s various leading ladies doesn’t really help matters.
But here’s the really interesting part: I wouldn’t be invested in any of these issues were it not for a story that genuinely kept me reading. For all of this book’s shortcomings, and I found a few, it ultimately holds together because Smith has a genuine gift for plot twists, and secrets, and the kind of juicy drama that makes a thriller keep barreling forward on the page. There’s good stuff in here, even if it’s sometimes overshadowed by missteps, and that means that while Scary Movie Night might not obsess you or give you nightmares or stick in your head for weeks on end, it will entertain you. I wanted more from this book, but I also want to see what Miranda Smith writes next, and that’s an achievement in itself.
Scary Movie Night is available July 14 wherever books are sold.
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