Movie Reviews
‘Heretic’ Review: Hugh Grant’s Chilling Performance Gives Religious Horror Film Some Sinister Edge
![‘Heretic’ Review: Hugh Grant’s Chilling Performance Gives Religious Horror Film Some Sinister Edge ‘Heretic’ Review: Hugh Grant’s Chilling Performance Gives Religious Horror Film Some Sinister Edge](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/00075-Heretic-selcts-_KF12875_1-H-2024.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1)
The most compelling moments in Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ mostly sharp religious horror Heretic involve Mr. Reed, a cerebral theologian played with reptilian persuasiveness by Hugh Grant, intellectually sparring with two young Mormon evangelists. Grant, whose eager eyes and puckish smile wooed Renée Zellweger’s Bridget Jones and Julia Roberts’ Anna Scott (Notting Hill), uses his signature charm here to test the bounds of these junior missionaries’ beliefs. He imbues his character, a sinister recluse, with a well-intentioned disposition that soon reveals itself to be an unsettling trap. Heretic, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival before it hits theaters November 15, sells Grant as a convincing villain and makes you wonder why he hasn’t played more of them.
Mr. Reed is the kind of guy whose intense gaze and off-color jokes betray a bizarre personality that’s initially easy to ignore. That’s what happens with Sisters Paxton (The Fablemans’ Chloe East) and Barnes (Yellowjackets’ Sophie Thatcher), two campaigners deployed by their chapter of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to convert this curious soul. When the women reach his house — at the top of a steep set of stairs integrated, Frank Lloyd Wright-style, into a grassy hill — they are eased by Mr. Reed’s candor and warmth. Most people treat the proselytizers like the plague. An early scene in which Sister Paxton is publicly humiliated by a group of teenagers captures their standing in this community.
Heretic
The Bottom Line A great Grant makes it work.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations)
Release date: Friday, Nov. 15
Cast: Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East
Director-screenwriters: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods
1 hour 50 minutes
But Mr. Reed is different. He invites Sisters Paxton and Barnes to come inside, assures them that his wife is home (Mormon women can’t be alone with a man, they say) and even offers them blueberry pie. Never mind that his movements suggest some malevolence, that he can’t stop staring at a surgical mark on Sister Barnes’ arm or that his questions edge into more personal territory. So rare is his attentiveness to faith — he takes out his own annotated copy of the Mormon bible — that Sisters Paxton and Barnes decide to disregard their anxieties. That, of course, is a mistake.
Beck and Woods, best known for creating A Quiet Place, confidently set up the initial chills of Heretic. Working with long-time Park Chan-wook cinematographer Chung-Hoon Chung and The Hunger Games production designer Philip Messina, the directorial duo focuses on the uncanny details of Mr. Reed’s home to establish a haunting tone. The wallpaper — a sickly yellow pattern — coupled with the lack of windows and the meticulous placement of the furniture cast doubt in both our and the girls’ minds about the trustworthiness of their host.
The hostility of the space becomes more apparent the longer Sisters Paxton and Barnes chat with Mr. Reed. His enthusiasm verges on pushy, a sign that alerts Barnes, especially, to the danger of the situation. By the time the women realize they are in peril — the doors won’t open, the pie doesn’t exist — it is too late. Mr. Reed reveals himself to be a kind of religion obsessive, a self-taught scholar of faith and belief. His studies have led him to some disturbing conclusions, which he maps out for Paxton and Barnes in one of Heretic’s most fun and distinctive scenes. All that can be said is that it involves Monopoly, Jar Jar Binks, Radiohead and the Hollies.
Grant delivers his verbose musings with the composure of a professor and the velocity of a fanatic. He paces around the back room, where he has corralled his guests, and unveils props to support his points. Chung uses overhead shots to capture Mr. Reed’s desktop — a neatly organized tableau of religious texts and versions of the Monopoly board game — which recalls a Renaissance triptych.
Heretic is quite compelling in these early moments, which include Paxton and Barnes’ entrance as well as Mr. Reed’s presentation. East and Thatcher’s performances play a big role in keeping us hooked. If Grant is the wily villain, these actresses are the savvy horror protagonists worth rooting for. A gripping transition occurs as Mr. Reed intellectually ambushes these women, whose faith gets tested in the most extreme manner. East’s Sister Barnes pulls us in first with her shrewd observations and fearless reproach of Mr. Reed’s logic. But soon we’re watching Thatcher, who smartly leverages Paxton’s perceived naivety throughout the film.
Like The Assessment, another offering at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Heretic is most compelling as a three-character chamber drama. The charade between Mr. Reed, Paxton and Barnes helps to distracts from the screenplay, which wobbles under analytical pressure. Beck and Wood, at first, seem intent on interrogating the pitfalls of modern religion, but their narrative never goes all the way in its criticism. Once Mr. Reed moves on from his speeches and into more conventional horror-villain machinations, so too does Heretic distance itself from its most fiery theses. While it doesn’t totally diminish the thrill of watching Grant’s character revel in his own supposed cleverness, it does make the enterprise disappointingly shallow. A thread with a Mormon leader pursuing an earnest search for the missing girls similarly goes nowhere beyond a cheap joke done better earlier in the film.
The relationship between Paxton, Barnes and Mr. Reed remains the most absorbing thread throughout Heretic. Even when the screenplay heads into deflating territory — trading potential acerbity for more neutral conclusions — their cat-and-mouse game keeps us curious and faithful.
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Movie Reviews
Speak No Evil (2024)
![Speak No Evil (2024) Speak No Evil (2024)](https://images.bauerhosting.com/empire/2024/09/speak-no-evil-1.jpg?ar=16%3A9&fit=crop&crop=top&auto=format&w=undefined&q=80)
Chilled American couple Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis) meet overfriendly Brits Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) on an Italian holiday and accept an invitation to spend a weekend with them in the West Country. However, it becomes apparent that the charming hosts have a sinister hidden agenda.
Christian Tafdrup’s 2022 horror Speak No Evil — available on Shudder — was an impressive, frog-boiling psycho picture about polite Danish folks who unwisely agree to spend a weekend away with the hearty Dutch family they met on holiday and are subjected to many, many micro-aggressions before the macro ones start up. For a while, James Watkins’ English-language remake hews close to the original… then, the films diverge (around the time of the excruciating decision to go back for the daughter’s toy rabbit) and become different, if complementary experiences.
There’s no denying that the first film was upsetting, and having watched that you wouldn’t want to go back again, so new twists are satisfying. James McAvoy, with a Mummerset burr and an imposing too-much-time-in-the-gym physique, is a charismatic, intimidating presence. He’s not played an all-out villain before, and goes to town with this, repeatedly springing some unforgivable trespass on his guests before taking it back and begging for sympathy, or acting hurt that they’re offended and stringing it out for another few hours, even as clues pile up about the depth of the hole they’re falling into.
Director James Watkins is very good at ratcheting screws.
Both Watkins’ major horror films — Eden Lake, The Woman In Black — are fairly ruthless in killing off characters who ought to be safe in the genre, aligning his vision with the bleakness of Tafdrup’s film. However, this fight is more even-handed, and a Straw Dogs-ish farmhouse battle rousingly pays off multiple Chekhov establish-deadly-weapons-for-use-later moments, throwing in extra revelations which add bite.
The business of this story in both versions is suspense, and Watkins is very good at ratcheting screws — stringing out moments like a possible getaway, one the villain seems happy to let play out, in such a manner that a companion even compares him to “my aunt’s cat” because he insists on playing with his food — but also springs satisfying reversals and pay-offs.
It’s not Speak No Evil (2022)— because what would be the point of that? — but Speak No Evil (2024) is a quality horror-suspense picture.
Movie Reviews
Creeping Death – Review | Screambox Halloween Slasher | Heaven of Horror
![Creeping Death – Review | Screambox Halloween Slasher | Heaven of Horror Creeping Death – Review | Screambox Halloween Slasher | Heaven of Horror](https://www.heavenofhorror.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Creeping-Death-Screambox-Review.jpg)
Watch Creeping Death on Screambox
Creeping Death comes from writer-director Matt Sampere who makes his feature debut with this Halloween horror movie. As mentioned earlier, it’s based on his short film of the same name.
The cast works well overall and the design and practical effects for the Celtic spirit Aos Si are all impressive. With the one big and unfortunate exception of the writer-director himself who plays Tim.
As good as he is at directing the rest of the cast, he does not work in front of the camera for me. Not at all. In fact, the movie only works briefly for me, when he isn’t on screen.
I love when a movie is made with passion, but it must be accompanied by talent. For this movie, there is passion and also talent, but someone needs to come in and “kill the darlings” because Matt Sampere isn’t quite able to do this himself.
This may sound harsh, but my intention is an honest and heartfelt recommendation. I think he could make solid horror movies as a writer and director, but not with himself in front of the camera.
Creeping Death is out on SCREAMBOX on September 10, 2024.
Movie Reviews
Movie review: Say ‘Beetlejuice’ twice and an unnecessary sequel appears
![Movie review: Say ‘Beetlejuice’ twice and an unnecessary sequel appears Movie review: Say ‘Beetlejuice’ twice and an unnecessary sequel appears](https://www.thelantern.com/files/2024/09/ENTER-MOVIE-VENICE-REPORT-2-MCT.jpg)
Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh/Warner Bros. via TNS
When one hears “Beetlejuice,” the 1988 Halloween classic often comes to mind, conjuring up memories of over-the-top campiness, oddball characters, zany horror and everything out-of-the-ordinary that is to be expected from a Tim Burton project.
The 2024 sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” despite having twice the title, possesses half of the spooky charm as its 36-year-old predecessor.
In “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” Winona Ryder reprises her role as Lydia Deetz; only this time around, Lydia isn’t the teenage daughter of a couple being haunted by the demon Beetlejuice. Instead, she’s the middle-aged star of a paranormal talk show — titled “Ghost House” — during which she provides families consultations on their haunted houses à la “Ghostbusters.”
Jenna Ortega steps into the cynical teenager role as Lydia’s daughter Astrid, who is skeptical of her mother’s profession and questionable new relationship with her business partner following the death of her father.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is primarily preoccupied with resituating the classic Halloween story in a modern context, and perhaps that’s the main reason why the original’s charm feels beyond saving. It’s hard to feel cozy and spooky watching a Burton film when the characters drive luxury sports cars and whip out their iPhone-esque cellphones with possessed vigor.
Beyond the natural growing pains of moving into the 21st century, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” lacks the first film’s eye-popping gothic chic. The campy, unrealistic practical effects and costumes are thrown out and substituted with air-brushed counterparts that strip the sequel of authenticity.
Though to be fair, complaints about the corporate-washed soul of the film could be excused if the story didn’t feel like it was vomited out by a trick-or-treater who had too much Halloween candy.
It’s undeniably true that the plot of the original “Beetlejuice” didn’t follow the most cohesive structure, but it never felt boring or convoluted. The same can’t be said for its sequel, which can’t seem to figure out if it wants to spend more time resurrecting characters from the first film or introducing half-baked new ones.
This dilemma is seen in Lydia’s new partner Rory (Justin Theroux), who overstays his welcome both in the world of the film and in screen time.
Additionally, Ortega is once again typecast as a grumpy, dark-humored teenager whose presence is made infinitely less interesting by a cringe-worthy romance subplot.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” still recaptures some of the original’s wacky exuberance, particularly when Michael Keaton gets to shine as the titular character, enabling his morbid charisma to — once again — be the film’s standout factor.
Unfortunately, Keaton is drastically underutilized, particularly in the film’s first two acts, during which it feels as though his character is given the bare minimum amount of screen time that still allows the film to be titled after him.
If you’re craving the spooky whimsy of “Beetlejuice,” you’d be better off relishing the original’s tricks and treats than going to see “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” a ghost of its precursor that didn’t deserve to be resurrected.
Rating: 2/5
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