Heretic

You may not realize it, but you’ve been yearning to hear Hugh Grant’s Jar Jar Binks impression.

Heretic fulfills that dream and, for a while, makes a play at leapfrogging the year’s best psychological horror films before ultimately crashing back down to Earth.

Despite the somewhat botched ending, the story of Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher, Yellowjackets) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East, The Fabelmans) paying a visit to the home of potential convert Mr. Reed (Grant) demonstrates a significant step up from the baffling Adam Driver dinosaur flick 65 for the writing/directing duo of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods.

From its comedic introduction of the women’s thoughts on sex, Heretic seamlessly transitions to its suspenseful true self as the visitors realize they’ve gotten themselves into deeper proverbial waters than they expected.

While grilling his guests on Mormon doctrine and gradually introducing Mr. Read’s own intensely researched findings, Grant clearly relishes playing the villain. Sure, he memorably broke bad in Paddington 2 and was snivelingly good in The Gentlemen, but the level of insidiousness that he attains here is its own distinct achievement.

No textbook damsels in distress, Thatcher and East imbue their characters with a surprising amount of resourcefulness within what’s essentially a prison, not quite matching their captor’s verve yet still turning the showdown into something close to a cat-and-mouse battle.

Gifted shepherds of these laudable performances, Beck and Woods nicely exaggerate the claustrophobic nature of these circumstances through clear-eyed cinematography and razor-sharp edits. But it’s their screenplay that eventually lets Heretic down.

Perhaps unsurprisingly from the writers of the conceptually brilliant but logically warped A Quiet Place, the team’s latest project likewise buckles under its own ambition, growing overly wordy and losing its tight grip on invested viewers as more answers are revealed.

But before then, we’re blessedly treated to Grant channeling the iconic voice of everyone’s favorite Gungan outcast-turned-Senator — quite possibly the year’s best comedic moment that also may carry some subtext regarding the summer 1999 movie season when Grant’s Notting Hill and Binks’ The Phantom Menace overlapped in theaters around the world.

Now, all we need is Julia Roberts’ take on Watto and we’ll be set.

Grade: B. Rated R. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: A24)