What is it with horror movies in 2024? It feels like a golden age of clever, intellectual, and suspenseful horrors that trade on our understanding of the genre without ever feeling like they are relying on cheap thrills.

Like Longlegs, this one has some excellent casting with the quintessentially bumbling, gentle, harmless Hugh Grant playing the antagonist. It was enough to draw me to this film, just like Nicolas Cage in Longlegs got me into the cinema without really reading anything about the film.

Heretic also has Sophie Thatcher, for anyone who has watched Yellowjackets and her depiction of a young Juliet Lewis as Natalie you will know how she can hold your attention. She is one of two young Mormon women, intent on their responsibilities to be missionaries and to try and convert as many people as possible. Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher), feels a bit more worldly, professing to have converted eight or nine people so far. Sister Paxton (Chloe East) is all wide eyed amazement and so keen to convert her first believer that she and Sister Barnes ignore all of the red flags and enter the home of Mr Reed (Hugh Grant).

It is a cautionary tale that we should never ignore our instincts when things don’t seem quite right. They arrive at his isolated home as a snowstorm begins and although reluctant to enter his house without another woman being present, they believe him when he says his wife is there and is baking blueberry pie. Once inside, seeming to ignore his flippant comment that the walls and ceilings have metal in them, we know that it won’t be easy for them to leave.

For a while we are not sure if this is a story about existential crisis and the erosion of belief in modern society. Grant has some neat allegories about religion and music and board games that seem to present his persona as something more than just a potential psychopath. It’s not all talk though and overall it is a satisfying, suspenseful, gory, ride that’s satisfies with its scares as well as it’s gentle subtexts.