Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton spend their day talking to strangers about their church. Most people are not interested. Mr. Reed seems happy to invite them in. In Heretic, the danger starts with a host who will not let his guests leave. Long before anyone is hurt, you want the two women to stop being polite and get out of his house.
This 2024 English-language horror film follows two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon church. Sophie Thatcher plays Barnes and Chloe East plays Paxton. They are fellow missionaries, not biological sisters. Hugh Grant plays Reed, the man who has asked to hear more about their faith. Scott Beck and Bryan Woods wrote and directed the film.
An invitation that becomes hard to refuse
The women cannot enter a man’s home alone, so Reed says his wife is inside baking blueberry pie. It is raining, and the offer sounds welcoming. Once they sit down, he begins asking increasingly personal questions about their beliefs. His wife never joins the conversation, and the women start noticing reasons to doubt what he has told them.
Grant makes Reed scary without having him shout at his guests. Reed smiles, hesitates and sounds almost embarrassed to ask his questions. He can be funny without making it feel safe to laugh at him. He keeps speaking pleasantly even when the women want to leave. Watching them decide how firmly to answer him is more frightening than waiting for someone to jump out of the dark.
The details of the house give the women something to investigate while Reed talks. The locked exit and the source of the blueberry smell are clues they can check for themselves. They need to work out which of his promises are lies, not simply wait for him to announce that he is dangerous. Those discoveries make the early part of the visit especially tense.
Barnes and Paxton do more than listen
Barnes is quicker to challenge Reed. Thatcher makes her careful answers feel like an effort to disagree without making their situation worse. Paxton is more eager to be agreeable, but East does not play her as someone incapable of noticing danger. Paxton’s nervous manner does not mean she has stopped thinking. The differences between them make it worth watching both women whenever Reed tries to force an answer.
Reed eventually uses pop songs and versions of Monopoly to argue that religions copy earlier ideas. You do not need a background in religious history to follow his comparison. His claims belong to the character, though; the film is not a reliable lesson on the origins of every religion. Barnes pushes back, and those exchanges are more interesting than the stretches where he gets to lecture without much interruption.
Some of those speeches run too long. By then, we know the women are trapped and that Reed wants to control their answers. Another example supporting his theory delays the next attempt to escape. The problem is the repeated argument, not the fact that people are talking. Earlier conversations keep changing what the women know about the house and their host. These later speeches do that less often.
The escape becomes less tense as Reed explains more
When the women move farther into the house, Reed tries to make them believe he can show them a miracle. The question becomes whether he has found something impossible or arranged another trick. That is a good reason to keep watching. But explaining how the tricks work takes too much of the final stretch. The women have to talk through what happened when their immediate need to escape is more urgent.
We still cared about Barnes and Paxton, and the change from awkward conversation to bloody violence is frightening. We just preferred the earlier scenes, when a small discovery could expose another lie. Heretic is a good choice if you enjoy tense conversations and watching characters question a dangerous stranger. If you want a fast escape story with frequent scares, the amount of talking may be frustrating.
Pixel Twelve score: 7.5/10. Grant’s friendly delivery and the missionaries’ different reactions make the visit worth watching. The long lectures and detailed explanations keep it from being as tense all the way through.
Heretic is streaming on Hulu in the United States, which added it on September 8, 2026. It runs about 111 minutes and carries a U.S. MPA rating of R for some bloody violence. There are also sexual references and prolonged scenes of women being threatened. Availability outside the U.S. may differ.
Behind the scenes of Heretic
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Visit the Heretic movie page for the cast, trailer and streaming details, or read more Pixel Twelve reviews.
