Heretic ★★★

AFTER holding us tightly in its grasp for 90 minutes, Heretic loses its nerve and opts for a conventional ending.

Unlike other recent intellectual exercises in high-concept psychological horror, like Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar and Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, 2024’s Heretic doesn’t carry its plot through a satisfying conclusion.

It’s not a terrible way to end a horror film, nor does it sully the rest of an equally entertaining and thought-provoking excoriation of the dichotomy that exists in human faith in religion and its impact of life.

The film, written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods who were responsible for the Quiet Place films, picks on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but could have chosen a dozen other faiths to dismantle.

Hugh Grant is excellent as Mr Reed, playing against type as a very serious villain, retaining but twisting his usual debonair and cheeky gentlemanly persona into something equally innocent and dangerous.

Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East are also very good as the two missionaries enticed into his home and forced to engage in an intellectual debate that becomes a life-threatening game of cat and mouse.

Watched at the cinema.