Movie Reviews
Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Heretic’ on VOD, an idea-driven horror-thriller in which Hugh Grant shows his dark side
Heretic (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) shows us a side of Hugh Grant we’ve never seen before: The horror-movie antagonist. Now, he’s played a villain before, but Paddington 2 isn’t quite the prelude to his turn in A24‘s Heretic, where he plays a psycho-manipulator who draws a pair of young and naive Mormon women into his web. The film is written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who wrote A Quiet Place and directed Adam Driver dinosaur movie 65 – and now take a step forward with a nice, juicy horror-thriller.
HERETIC: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Sister Paxton (Chloe East) vehemently denies watching porn. But that one time she got a glimpse of one of those videos, she saw in the woman’s eyes “divine confirmation.” Interesting! This tells us what we need to know about this Mormon missionary who, along with Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher), pedals a bicycle around town in her maxi skirt, hoping to convert whoever will listen to their spiel. It’s a rough go. They’re subject to bullies’ taunts about “magic underwear,” and “That South Park musical kinda makes fun of us,” Sister Paxton sighs. She’s more naive than Sister Barnes, but out in the cynical-slash-realist secular world, with their wide eyes and tryhard pasted-on cheery smiles and very youthful looks (they’re 20ish, maybe 23, 24), they’re both like lambs among the wolves.
Yet there’s always hope, even if you have to peer into a wolf’s den in hopes of finding it. Of course, at first they don’t realize they’re knocking on the door of a wolf’s den, but soon enough they get That Sinking Sensation. Let’s not get ahead of things, though. There’s a “Mr. Reed” on their list of interested candidates for Mormonism, so they find his house, lock their bikes to the gate and ring the doorbell. Above them, a storm gets increasingly drenchy. He finally answers and lets them in and promises them pie and the pending arrival of his wife who he says is baking the pie, and can’t you smell the blueberries? Mmm mmm good! He’s so very cheerful, this Mr. Reed. But his wife needs to be present in the room lest the Mormon rules be broken, our Sisters insist, and he promises she’s coming, she’s coming.
So continue without her, they must. Mr. Reed is so very receptive and welcoming and we know he’s baiting these women – this is the benefit of being the movie watcher instead of the movie character – but do they? Not sure. Perhaps it’s not That Sinking Sensation but rather the awkwardness of complete strangers discussing religion so earnestly, and our Sisters just have to push through it. Well, this Mr. Reed, with the upbeat demeanor and bright, wide smile, he starts a rather deep discussion about the nature of belief, then whips out his Book of Mormon, which is tabbed and post-it-noted like someone who’s studied the living dook out of it. And then he starts carving up Mormonism like it’s a roast turkey. “How do you feel about polygamy?” he asks pointedly, but with a giant grin. And then, “What’s your favorite fast food?” Methinks Mr. Reed is f—ing with them. F—ing with them real hard.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Heretic is part-conversation movie, part-horror movie, so it’s very roughly a mix of Barbarian or Don’t Breathe-type what’s-in-the-house-what’s-in-the-houuuuuuuussssssse movies and, I dunno, My Dinner With Andre? Hey, I said “roughly.”
Performance Worth Watching: Watching Grant go from the stammering charmer of all the best rom-coms (except Did You Hear About the Morgans? of course) to living deliciously as an evil manipulative creep with a rotten core? Delightful.
Memorable Dialogue: My two fave lines:
Mr. Reed: “My wife is shy – but the pie? The pie is nigh!”
Sister Barnes: “If I say ‘magic underwear,’ that means STAB.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Things do not go well for Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton, and I’ll say no more. That’s no surprise, mind you – one doesn’t sit down to watch a film called Heretic with its sinister one-sheet and expect it to be nothing but spirited debates about divinity and religion. But that’s essentially what it is for roughly the first half, with Mr. Reed pulling out a Monopoly board and playing Radiohead (!) to illustrate his cogent points. Of course, he does all this in a manner calculated to escalate tension, and grow the feeling of unease within his wary subjects.
The second half becomes more like a typical psycho-horror movie, with bursts of violence, an exploration of the grimiest nooks in Mr. Reed’s house and the implementation of the crackity-bones (crackity crackity bones bones bones!) sound effect. I worry that Beck and Woods shift into ludicrous speed out of obligation, to reward the gorehounds and specterfiends out there who just sat through 45 minutes of slow-burn talky debates about religion and really need some liquid to spill lest they log on and trash the film in the forums.
But the ideas – all deeply unsettling, about why we believe what we believe, and the things we’re told and that we tell ourselves in order to make sense of the world – remain present even as the filmmakers put their characters in ominous basements with pointy letter openers in their pockets, and unknown who-knows-what lurking behind creaky old doors. And the performances are consistently scary, funny and thoughtful, with Thatcher and East showing more guile and spunk than you might expect, especially across from Grant’s savagely entertaining scenery-chewing. Take from Heretic what you will, be it the shocks and twists or its ruminations on the slippery-slope dangers of belief, or the lack thereof. I took it as a reminder that no matter the intensity of your passionate views, convincing someone that your way is the way is a fool’s errand. You might as well be teaching algebra to your cat.
Our Call: Heretic is fresh, amusing and freaky all at once. And Mr. Reed has the stuff of a minor-classic horror character. Believe it and STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Movie Reviews
1986 Movie Reviews – Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit | The Nerdy
by | May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 10:30 am EDT
Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1986 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1986 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1986 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
This time around, it’s May 9, 1986, and we’re off to see Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit.
Dangerously Close
I would love to tell you what the point of this film was, but I’m not sure it knew.
An elite school has turned into a magnet school, attracting some “undesirables,” so a group of students known as The Sentinels take up policing their school, but will they go too far?
The basic plot of the film is simple enough, but there is an oddball “twist” toward the end tht served no real purpose and somehow turns the whole thing into a murder-mystery. Mysteries only work when you know you’re supposed to be solving them, and not when you’re alerted to one existing with 15 minutes left.
Decent 80s music, some stylistic shots, absolutely no substance.
Fire with Fire
Oh wait… I may want to go back and watch Dangerously Close again over this one.
Joe Fisk (Craig Sheffer) is being held at a juvenile delinquent facility close a high-end all-girls Catholic school. One day while running through the forest as part of an exercise he spots Catholic schoolgirl Lisa Taylor (Virginia Madsen) and the two fall immediately in love because… reasons.
This film is just so incredibly lazy. The ‘love story’ really can just be chalked up to ‘hormones.’
Last Resort
Once again I am baffled how Charles Grodin kept getting work so much through out the 1980s.
George Lollar (Grodin) is a salesman in Chicago in need of a vacation. He loads up the family and takes them to Club Sand, which turns out to be a swingers resort as well as surrounded by barbed wire to keep rebels out.
There are a lot of talented people in this movie such as Phil Hartman and Megan Mullally, but the film lets them down at every turn with half-baked ideas of jokes. Supposedly, Grodin rewrote nearly the entire script and I think that explains a lot about how this film feels like unfinished ideas. It’s a Frankenstein monster of a script with half-complete ideas that feel like they are from completely different movies.
Short Circuit
Lets just get this out of the way: What in the world was Fisher Stevens doing?
NOVA Laboratory has come up with a new series of military robots called S.A.I.N.T. (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear Transport). Following a successful demonstration for the military, Five is struck by an electrical surge and finds itself needing ‘input.’ After inadvertently escaping the lab, it wands into the life of Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy), who cares for animals and takes Five in. Dr. Newton Crosby (Steve Guttenberg) is trying to get five back, while the security team wants to destroy it.
Overall, the film is thin, but harmless. The 80s did seem to love a ‘technology being used for the wrong reasons’ theme, and this falls into that camp. What is mind-blowing, however, is Stevens as Ben Jabituya, Crosby’s assistant. Not only is he wearing brown face, but he’s doing a horrible Indian accent and later reveals he was born and raised in the U.S.
His whole character is mystifying.
Honestly, a couple of decades ago I may have recommended this movie, but it’s a definite pass now just for being offensive.
1986 Movie Reviews will continue on May 16, 2026, with Sweet Liberty and Top Gun.
By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer
Posted: May 8th, 2026 / 08:34 PM
AFFECTION movie poster | ©2026 Brainstorm Media
Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Jessica Rothe, Joseph Cross, Julianna Layne
Writer: BT Meza
Director: BT Meza
Distributor: Brainstorm Media
Release Date: May 8, 2026
AFFECTION is an odd title for this tale. While it is about a number of topics and emotions, fondness isn’t one of them. Obsession, definitely. Love, possibly. The kind of general warm fellow feelings associated with “affection”? No.
There have been a lot of movies lately in which characters – mostly women – are grappling with false identities and/or false memories imposed upon them, mostly by men.
Let us stipulate that the protagonist (Jessica Rothe) in AFFECTION is not an android or in an artificial reality. However, we can tell something is way off from the opening sequence. A car is stalled on a tree-bordered highway. Rothe’s character is lying face down on the asphalt beside it, possibly dead.
But then the young woman rises, dragging a broken ankle. She experiences a full-body seizure. Fighting to recover, she sees oncoming headlights and tries to run, only to be hit by a car.
The woman wakes up in a bed she doesn’t recognize, next to a man (Joseph Cross) she likewise is sure she’s never seen before. One big confrontation later, the man says his name is Bruce – and that the woman is his wife, Ellie.
Ellie insists that her name is Sarah Thompson, and she is married to someone else, with a son. When she sees her reflection in a mirror, she doesn’t relate to the face looking back at her.
Bruce counters that Ellie has a rare neurological condition that causes her to block out her waking life and believe her dreams are real. This is why they agreed, together, to move to this isolated house, without the kinds of interruptions that can hinder Ellie’s recovery.
The set-up is presented in a way where we share Ellie’s skepticism. But Ellie and Bruce’s little daughter Alice (Julianna Layne) immediately identifies Ellie as “Mommy!” Alice appears to be too young to be in on any kind of deception, so what is going on here?
AFFECTION eventually explains this via a helpful videotape, though it’s so convoluted that viewers watching on streaming may want to replay the sequence to make sure they understand the exposition.
Writer/director BT Meza musters a sense of menace and lurking weirdness, as well as making great use of his location.
We still have a lot of questions, many of which are still unanswered by the film’s end. It may not matter to the points AFFECTION is trying to make, but a better sense of exactly how all this started might help our investment.
As it is, despite a heroically versatile performance by Rothe, a credible and anguished turn by Cross and appealing work from Layne, we’re so busy trying to piece together what’s important and what’s not and how we’re supposed to feel about all of it that it can be hard to keep track of the action as it unfolds.
Agree or not, Meza’s arguments are lucid and illustrated clearly by AFFECTION’s events. However, the movie is structured in a way that becomes more frustrating as it goes. We comprehend it intellectually but can’t engage viscerally.
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The hosts gave their reviews and assigned the following star ratings:
Deanna: ★★★★.5
Allison: ★★★.25
Julia: ★★
To watch more livestreams and digital video content, head to the WRIC+ Originals page. You can also watch full on-demand videos on your smart TV using the WRIC+ app.
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