This would have been my favourite film of 2024 if not for the marginally weaker second half. However, it’s right up there as one of the best things I saw this year. (For what it’s worth, I put Strange Darling ahead of it).

 This is another in what’s turning out to be a long list of movies you should know as little about before you see it. The one-sentence precis is that two Mormon missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), visit a potential convert in Mr Reed (Hugh Grant). Charming and seemingly harmless, the two Sisters—expressly there to pass on the good word of the prophet Joseph Smith—accept Mr Reed’s invite to enter his house. On entering, he draws out a knife, slices their throats and drinks their blood!!!!!!! Just kidding. Although for at least fourty minutes of the run-time, you’re waiting for precisely that moment or something like it, to occur.

 I watch a lot of Biblical scholar TikTok (people like Dan McClellan—ironically a Mormon—

who de-mystify rather than support Christian apologetics). I note this because the movie, amongst other things, tackles the origins of established religions, drawing on urban myths that have become mainstream beliefs about the pagan rituals and Gods that underpin early Christianity.* A lot of what Reed says to the Sisters in the first half of the film is horseshit, but horseshit you rarely see discussed or debated in a genre film (or, frankly, any film). Hugh Grant is extraordinary in that opening half, charming, condescending, menacing and curious. His to-and-fro with Sophie Thatcher (who is also very good in the Paramount series Yellow Jackets) is the highlight of the film. Both deserve awards. They won’t get them.** But they deserve them.

 The movie does drop a notch when the genre aspect kicks in. You’ve been expecting it throughout the film, so you can’t help but be a little underwhelmed when it happens. To be fair, though, it’s not bad. Several terrific set pieces in the last half elevate it above most horror/thriller filmmaking, but it can’t hold a candle to the tension and suspense of that incredible first half.***

 *I note this as a Jew who has no skin in the game. But even I get frustrated by how often Christmas is linked back to Mithras and Sol Invictus based on zero scholarly evidence.

**I wrote this before Grant was nominated for a Golden Globe. Is an Academy Award nom in the offing?

***And, let’s be honest here, it’s not like I can imagine a better second half that wouldn’t devolve into cliché—which Heretics certainly doesn’t.