‘Heretic’
Address: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods
Performers: Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East, Topher Grace
Premiere: January 1, 2025
★★★
If Scott Beck and Bryan Woods became known as screenwriters thanks to a horror film with almost no dialogue, ‘A Quiet Place’ (2018), now their new work as directors builds suspense especially through the word; What haunts its devoted heroines – two young Mormon missionaries who one day knock on the wrong door – is nothing but the arrogant intellect of a guy bent on lecturing them about dogmas and the limits of religion through monologues full of ‘Tarantinian’ pop references.
During its first part, ‘Heretic’ lets fear emerge slowly and fluidly, hardly resorting to scares and allowing its female protagonists to think instead of making them make stupid decisions as they descend through an impossibly intricate house that acts as a reflection. of his mental state. The philosophical observations he makes in the meantime are not as original or profound as his directors seem to believe, but it is only when the threat becomes explicit that your seductive power truly dissipatesespecially since the ingenious traps it sets up in the process lack any real thematic goal.
‘Heretic’ would work only as a clever screenwriting exercise if it weren’t for the fantastic performance by Hugh Grantwho has been trying for 15 years to dismantle the romantic comedy heartthrob image that he built in the 90s and that here, finally, he shatters, turning the charisma that served him so well then into something genuinely disturbing. Who could have imagined that such a monster was nesting inside?
