This is a well-acted movie all round, but primarily a vehicle for Grant -- who has played his share of comic villains, but has rarely been asked to be seriously scary.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 3, 2024

It's a reminder, particularly in the horror genre, that a good idea and a single location can be a really adventurous roller coaster ride.

| Nov 23, 2024

[Grant] is commanding in Heretic, which starts out as a psychological thriller and may or may not develop into a full-tilt horror movie.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 22, 2024

A complex debate on the legitimacy of religion that arrives framed in absolutely captivating staging. [Full review in Spanish]

| Nov 13, 2024

As a housebound sadist menacing a pair of Mormon missionaries in the new horror film Heretic, Grant gives the least engaged and most profoundly joyless performance of his five-decade career.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 13, 2024

Here [Scott Beck and Bryan Woods] have made a mini-masterpiece, with lean filmmaking and lots of surprises.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 13, 2024

This is a very fun, juicy Hugh Grant performance.

| Nov 13, 2024

Hugh Grant embraces his inner monster, ditching charm for chills—at least, that’s the intent. But nothing can save this laughably overwrought, pseudo-horror mess from collapsing under its own pretensions.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 12, 2024

Heretic ultimately doesn’t quite reach the high standards of its classic forebears, as it forsakes logic and embraces conventionality in its rushed third act. But it excels as a showcase for Hugh Grant’s dark side. Long may its shadow stretch.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 9, 2024

While Thatcher and East are mysterious and bubbly characters, Grant’s mansplaining Mr. Reed takes the cake — or pie.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 9, 2024

... A deliciously entertaining and thought-provoking theological debate wrapped up inside the clothing of a horror movie.

| Original Score: B | Nov 9, 2024

If Heretic proves nothing else, it’s that creepy, evil Hugh Grant is the best Hugh Grant.

| Nov 9, 2024

​Ecclesiastical horror may make audiences think about The Exorcist in all its iterations, but in this taut three-hander issues of religious doctrine, faith and belief intersect with scary movie staples.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 9, 2024

For a movie that seems to want to be about faith, it relies pretty heavily on works (and the miraculous transformation of a frightened teen into a tough-minded detective), right up until its big deus ex machina.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 9, 2024

Through it all, Hugh Grant commits fully to the madness of Mr. Reed, even when the wheels fly off in the final act and the film falls back on all too familiar horror movie clichés.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 8, 2024

Hugh Grant uses his charm for evil in this provocative cat-and-mouse game about the meaning, if any, of religion in a godless modern world. The romcom dreamboat of yore has been replaced by a diabolical presence eager to send us all to hell. What fun.

| Nov 8, 2024

Once its premise is established, “Heretic” becomes a clever series of cat-and-mouse games propelled not by horrible incidents but by dialogue.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 8, 2024

Although it is unashamedly a genre piece, Heretic is not only an expertly engineered work of suspense but also an ingeniously structured colloquy about the most deeply held belief systems.

| Nov 8, 2024

Even as the movie dribbles into disappointing familiarity, the pleasure [Grant] exudes as an irredeemable fiend is plenty seductive.

| Nov 8, 2024

Alarm bells start going off almost immediately as “Heretic” shrewdly introduces doubt about what should be believed. At times, it hints at the supernatural: Are the sisters face to face with a potential convert, a religious hobbyist or the devil himself?

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 7, 2024