Hugh Grant is always charming. That quality has served him well in decades of romantic comedy roles, even when playing characters who might otherwise be less than endearing, like an elected official who romances a member of his staff, or a layabout who pretends to be a parent in order to date single mothers. It’s served Grant equally well in his recent turn toward villainy, as he weaponizes that charm in service of truly reprehensible characters who nevertheless come off as likable.
After playing devious antagonists in Paddington 2, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and the Guy Ritchie films The Gentlemen and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, Grant reached the pinnacle of his villain era with Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ 2024 horror movie Heretic, which is now streaming on Max. Grant’s bad-guy characters in those other films were often silly — overconfident buffoons who received deserved comeuppance from the heroes. In Heretic, Grant’s Mr. Reed is closer to one of his rom-com characters, a self-aware cad whose nastiness is inextricable from his appeal.
As the outwardly friendly Reed, who invites a pair of Mormon missionaries into his home with malicious intent, Grant is playing a familiar horror archetype: the seemingly friendly, harmless person who reveals their true evil nature once they have the protagonist trapped. The difference is that Reed doesn’t have a façade to drop; he’s just as inquisitive and eager as he first appears, and he presents the parameters of his trap openly and casually, almost from the first moment that Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) arrive at his door.
Just because Reed plans to abduct and torture Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton doesn’t mean that he isn’t truly interested in their religious beliefs. It’s precisely because of those religious beliefs that he wants to hold them captive, and when he talks about his own personal struggle as a religious seeker, he’s being completely honest. He may be dismissive of Mormonism, but he fancies himself a rigorous theologian, and he’s genuinely eager to hear their counter-arguments, even more so when they see through some of his thinner rhetorical tactics.
Reed’s inflated sense of his own intellect makes him certain that he will always get the best of these naïve young women, not only in his carefully designed puzzle-box of a house, but also in any discussion of the nature of God and faith. Grant deftly reveals the flickers of frustration when one of Reed’s points doesn’t land as effectively as he intends, as when the Gen Z Mormons aren’t familiar with Radiohead’s “Creep” or Jar Jar Binks. Even so, he plays it off as adorably flustered, just as a Grant character in a rom-com might if he said something awkward to the woman he’s courting.
As Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton stand terrified in Reed’s makeshift church, frantically looking for a way to escape, Reed takes pleasure in toying with them, but he takes equal pleasure in the carefully crafted presentation he gives about the history of major world religions, complete with a projector, a remote clicker, and handily accessible props. It’s easy to imagine him practicing the speech like a devoted student before a debate tournament, getting the cadence and the phrasing just right and timing his words perfectly with each visual aid.
Reed may bear a superficial resemblance to Tobin Bell’s similarly lecture-prone Saw franchise villain Jigsaw, but Jigsaw has nothing but contempt for the people he lectures, most of whom are not in a position to respond. There would be no point for Reed in giving his presentation to muzzled, injured victims who are facing a short countdown to a painful death. He needs an engaged audience, fellow seekers who yearn for the divine and who have devoted their lives to it as wholeheartedly as he has.
It’s that earnestness that sets Reed apart from other horror villains, and that’s what Grant conveys in his sly, ingratiating performance. There’s a sense that Reed would get nearly as much enjoyment from having this discussion with Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton on the park bench where they’re sitting at the beginning of the movie, and he’d only be mildly disappointed that he wasn’t able to torment and mutilate them. The teenagers who pretend to want to take a selfie with the missionaries only to pull down Sister Paxton’s skirt and expose her “magic underwear” treat the two women with less respect than Reed does, in his own twisted way.
Thatcher and East have less showy roles than Grant does, but they afford their characters the kind of compassion and consideration that Mormonism almost never receives in mainstream films. By playing Reed as a slight variation on his own beloved past characters, Grant affords them that consideration as well. He’s just relying on his natural charisma to attract the people he’s most interested in getting to know. No matter how well viewers can see what’s coming once Reed opens his front door, it’s nearly impossible to refuse his invitation to enter.
Heretic is now streaming on Max.
