Grant’s newest film, Heretic, extends the actor’s passion for the strange or off-kilter into new realms of horror. The stylized chamber piece is set in a Mountain West suburb, where Grant’s charming milquetoast Mr. Reed (no first name given) has summoned a pair of young Mormon missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), to his unassuming doorstep to hear out their conversion pitch. Wary, at first, of his invitation inside, the sisters are assured by Reed that his wife will soon make an appearance with freshly baked blueberry pie. But Reed’s nerdy mannerisms and goggle-eyed ebullience slowly give way to discomfiting questions about faith that disturb the more experienced Sister Barnes. By then, however, the two women are already trapped inside his domestic labyrinth of intellectual, spiritual, and physical booby traps.
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May, Fri, 2023