Heretic: "Creepy, evil Hugh Grant is the best Hugh Grant."

Whoopsidaisies. Hugh Grant’s done it again. 

Over the course of a wildly successful 43-year career, the tousled-haired Brit has pivoted from bumbling romantic (Notting Hill, Love Actually) to irresistible cad (Bridget Jones’ Diary) and, more recently, dastardly villains from the ridiculous to the downright nasty, with stand-out roles in Paddington 2, Wonka, The Undoing, A Very English Scandal, and Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves. 

In Heretic, now streaming on Showmax, Grant side-steps – rather gleefully – into outright claustrophobic psychological horror. If you’re one of the millions of romcom fans who’ve spent the past few decades weak at the knees over Grant, you’ll want to brace yourself because it turns out, as Rolling Stone says, that “creepy, evil Hugh Grant is the best Hugh Grant.” Or as Slate put it, he’s “entered his villain era - and he’s better than ever.”

This is backed up by Best Actor nominations for Grant in Heretic at this year’s Golden Globes, BAFTAs and Critics Choice Awards, where he was also nominated for The Regime. 

Rotten Tomatoes’ third best-reviewed horror of 2024, Heretic centres on two young Mormon missionaries who are forced to prove their faith when they knock on the wrong door and are greeted by the diabolical Mr Reed, becoming ensnared in his deadly game of cat-and-mouse. 

Sporting a colourful knitted sweater, his trademark awkwardness, self-deprecating humour, and that “Oops, sorry-not-sorry” grin, Grant’s Mr Reed promises blueberry pie and lively theological debate… before turning the actor’s familiar charms against us, to spectacular effect. 

The New York Times described the persona that made Grant a megastar as “a quintessentially British romantic hero of winning charm and diffidence.” But, they say, “his recent run of strange and sometimes creepy characters plays so effectively against type that you begin to suspect you were mistaken about his type all along.”

Grant says Reed “loves being an iconoclast and he loves to burst bubbles of belief — it thrills him, in fact, and maybe even arouses him ...  And he loves the attention, and the company, his young visitors bring to him.”

In a BAFTA interview, Grant explained, “This guy’s clearly very f*cked up and evil, but superficially, he thinks he’s a lot of fun, like the trendy professor who thinks he’s going to make teaching a fun experience. And I thought, everything that’s scary in this film will be doubly scary because he treats everything as a game, like it’s fun.”

Award-winning directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods co-wrote the #1 box office hit horror A Quiet Place, 65, Eli Roth’s Haunt, and the 2023 adaptation of Stephen King’s The Boogeyman, which also starred Thatcher. For Heretic, they were up for Best Screenplay at the 2025 Film Independent Spirit Awards, but it’s their inspired casting of Grant that has everyone talking.

Speaking of watching Grant in Cloud Atlas, Beck says, “We were just bowled over by the risks he took in that film, and he just kept taking big risks role after role after role, beyond what most audiences knew him from … Hugh has quietly become one the greatest character actors working today. And like any great character actor, he steals every movie he's in.” 

"Grant's charm, smile, and accent are all key to what helped establish him in the '90s and early 2000s as one of the faces of the modern rom-com,” says Men’s Health. “In Heretic, those same qualities help make him into one of the best horror villains we've seen in a while. Who could say no to a slice of pie from Hugh Grant?"

Grant isn’t Heretic’s only remarkable performance though. The two wide-eyed missionaries – Reed’s hapless victims – are played by Sophie Thatcher (Yellowjackets) and Chloe East (The Fabelmans, The Wolf of Snow Hollow). Crucially, both actresses were raised in the Mormon faith. “I think that was very useful for the film,” Grant said in his BAFTA interview, “because it made these two Mormon girls very complicated and three-dimensional, and not sort of glassy-eyed zealots, which would be much more boring.”

At 64, “Mr Stuttery Blinky” as he once referred to himself, is currently reprising his role as Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, which set a new box office opening record for a romantic comedy in the UK and Ireland, according to Universal. 

Heretic is now streaming on Showmax, with Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy expected on the streamer in May 2025. That’s just in time to remind us of the Hugh Grant we fell in love with all those brightly lit, soft-focus films ago. But don’t blame us if watching his latest performances side-by-side leaves you with whiplash and a smidge of trauma as that rakish smile and the twinkle in his eye morphs into pure evil.   

Watch the trailer for Heretic

Watch Heretic on Showmax.