Heretic

Hugh Grant was absolutely amazing in this!
Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East fully embraced their characters and delivered outstanding performances.
[spoiler] The story and the underlying concept of exploring whether God exists and which religion might be the "true" one were incredibly thought-provoking. [/spoiler]

Hugh Grant was superb and the script A+ so giving this a 9/10.
Proves that CGI isn’t needed, just great acting and a good script.

It's designed to quicken your pulse and your mind at the same time.It was gorgeously made&wonderfully performed.Hugh delivers a standout performance.

Really good. It’s nice to see a film that doesn’t need tons of CGI and a mega budget, just three good actors and an excellent script.

What a script ladies and gentleman, what a script!!!! Excellent.

A movie, featuring Mormonism, which is very much not about Mormonism.

Let me explain.

Did this movie touch on themes most exmormons (and hopefully conscientious believing mormons) have had to struggle with? Yes. Will it unsettle you if you have ever served a full time LDS mission? Absolutely. Does it challenge faith, preconceived notions, even the validity of personal transcendent experience? Of course.

But at its core, this is a movie about a man: who thinks he knows everything, who is trying to convince women that he's right, whether or not he's enacting violence on them in the process. Mr Reed read like every self righteous atheist f*ckboi who steamrolled women because he thought he was more "rational". He was the villain of masculinity at its most toxic.

This is a movie about women's rage, bodily autonomy, compassion and optimism, humanism and sacrifice. This is a movie about the beautiful and sometimes inexplicable moments that can save our lives.

While i can't speak to the experience of watching this film while a believing member (i'm almost fifteen years post-resignation) i can speak to how it connects to my experience clawing back the small beautiful pieces of who i was when i was believing. I can speak to being seen in the brazen defiance of a man trying to control not only my body, but also my mind.

I place this movie in the same realm as Immaculate (2024), and will definitely be revisiting it soon.

Some films manage to unsettle you without ever raising their voice. Heretic does just that from the very first frame. It’s a tense, slow-burning thriller where every pause feels deliberate, every line carefully chosen. Almost everything takes place in a single location, but the atmosphere it builds is dense and claustrophobic. And at the center of it all: Hugh Grant.

His performance is mesmerizing. He doesn’t force the fear—he suggests it. The way he looks, smiles, speaks just a bit too slowly—it’s all deeply disturbing. I haven’t seen him this sharp in years, and here he’s far from the charming romantic type people usually associate with him. This time, he’s something else: charisma turned into menace.

The script plays with religious themes without preaching. There are clever lines, uncomfortable questions, and moments where you don’t know whether to laugh or tense up. It often feels like a chamber play, where everything rests on the actors and their subtle choices—and all three leads are outstanding.

Visually, it’s not flashy, but it uses darkness and confined spaces to trap you with the characters. It’s small-scale filmmaking that dares to tackle big themes: faith, guilt, manipulation, power. Not everything lands—perhaps the ending lacks the punch of the opening—but the ride is worth it.

Heretic doesn’t reinvent horror, but it twists it in clever ways. It’s elegant, uncomfortable, and full of shadows. And above all, it reminds us that true horror doesn’t always scream—it whispers.

The first half was 10/10. The debating and conversation was easily the best part of the movie. Once they got to the basement, it got kind of weird and lost steam

I think this movie has layers and depth and can be viewed in many ways. I’m going to focus on the scientific aspect of this movie because I may end up giving away too much of the movie. People are strange because we put animals in cages all the time and we don’t give it a second thought. But put—certain—people in its place then it becomes bewildering. Religion is the low-hanging fruit; women usually don’t go up to a man's house and start having a conversation, so religion gets women to the door. The game of mouse trap. The gospel was sent through a man; a sinner and a liar… are parts of it lies or all of it? By the end of the movie, I started thinking of the stir my professor created by telling everyone how he got on a plane and flew to the middle of a desert and walked where Jesus walked, then came back and said that man can’t be Jesus. But we have gotten comfortable watching, controlling or taking part in a simulation. She said studies had been done where people who prayed and those who didn’t had the same fate. But she prayed anyway. We play anyway.