Hugh Grant is aware that he’s best known for playing the bumbling love interest in romantic comedies. Now, he’s embracing his villain era.
“To be absolutely honest with you, I’ve felt more comfortable in the last eight or nine years where I’ve played almost exclusively twisted narcissistic monsters,” Grant told Yahoo Entertainment. “So I don’t know what that says about me.”
In Heretic, which is in theaters Nov. 8, Grant plays a scholar who is visited by two Mormon missionaries. As they share their message with him, his sinister intentions become increasingly apparent.
To get into character, Grant researched cult leaders and mass murderers. He found them “fascinating” — especially the ones who “could create a following that were loyal to them after knowing they were mass murderers.”
Grant took some inspiration from his own community, as well.
“A lot of the models that were in my head or mood board are actually people from my real life whose names I would prefer not to share because they might possibly take offense,” he joked.
Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who wrote and directed the movie, came up with the idea for the film after a bizarre real-life encounter. Early in their careers, they were going door-to-door in Iowa — much like Mormon missionaries do — scouting a possible location for a film project.
Beck told Yahoo Entertainment that a “nice elderly couple” answered the door and welcomed them into their “warm, inviting space” with “beautiful furniture and wonderful wallpaper.” When Beck and Woods pitched their movie, things got strange.
“We told them it’s about the end times, about this asteroid sailing through space that’s going to end all of life on Earth,” Beck said. “And all of a sudden, they start nodding empathetically. And they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s going to happen in a couple of years.’”
Beck said they were then presented with tea, which they decided not to drink. They got out of the house as quickly as possible.
Something similar happens in Heretic — though, as is probably obvious because it’s a horror movie, that getaway doesn’t happen quite as smoothly.
Woods told Yahoo Entertainment that Heretic is different from other religious horror films because many of them “use religion as a kind of jumping off point to substantiate some kind of supernatural threat.”
“Heretic is almost the opposite,” Woods said. “It’s about every religion on planet Earth, and it’s less interested in kind of the supernatural underpinnings of religious horror and more interested in debate and being a dialogue about why do you believe what you believe and the terror of not knowing what happens when you die.”
Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher, who play the two Mormon missionaries who visit Grant’s character, are both former Mormons in real life.
Thatcher told Yahoo Entertainment that she was impressed by how the script shares so many viewpoints with sensitivity. She shared the script with her mom, who is still a practicing Mormon.
“As soon as I got her approval, I felt like I could do it,” Thatcher said.
East told Yahoo Entertainment that when she first read the movie’s logline, she was immediately concerned that being a part of the film might offend people she cares about because Mormons are so often made fun of in popular culture, from The Book of Mormon to The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
“[I thought] it’s probably just this one-sided take on Mormonism and we get it. It’s in media everywhere. Mormons are the butt of the joke and all the stereotypes,” East said. Reading the script and noticing how precise it was in its terminology assuaged her fears.
“It really is a true depiction of sister missionaries and what they do,” she added.
Beck and Woods began writing the script a decade ago. They were stumped by Grant’s character, Mr. Reed, who speaks fluently about many religions, and took time to study scholars and learn more about life before returning to the script.
“Scott and I have known each other since we were 11 years old, and since [then] we’ve been, believe it or not, imagining doing some kind of religious horror exploration,” Woods said. “In seventh grade, we saw the movie Contact by Robert Zemeckis, and that had a profound effect on us … because it felt like an adult conversation about religion inside of the context of a popcorn movie.”
That’s exactly what they’re hoping Heretic is for their audience.
Heretic is in theaters Nov. 8.
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