Producers: Stacey Sher, Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, Julia Glausi and Jeanette Volturno   Directors: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods   Screenplay: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods   Cast: Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East, Topher Grace and Elle Young   Distributor: A24

Grade: B-

Playing a villain is not entirely new to Hugh Grant—one need only think of “Paddington 2,” “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” and “The Gentlemen” on the big screen, and “A Very English Scandal” on the small one.  But in all of those the characters had a comic vibe.  The closest he came to pure nastiness came with the HBO miniseries “The Undoing,” and even there his innate charm worked to the advantage of the mystery.

But he sheds any vestige of likability by the time the final credits of his first full-fledged horror movie, “Heretic,” roll.  To be sure, through the first section of the picture he exudes that charm, but even there he gives his familiar mannerisms a sinister edge.  And although the movie isn’t nearly as clever as it thinks it is, and the turn to pure horror in the last reel flounders, Grant makes it a watchable chiller.

He’s Mr. Reed, a frumpily genial fellow to whose remote house perched on a cliff in some unnamed English village two Mormon missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), come on the proverbial dark and stormy night.  He’s inquired about the religion, and stopping at his place is part of their evening rounds which, if their encounter with a bunch of teenage girls is any indication, have been less than successful.  They’re initially reluctant to come in out of the rain because of a prohibition on being alone in a house with a man, but enter after he assures them his wife is in the kitchen baking a blueberry pie, whose aroma wafts through the living room.  So they settle in for a conversation with him.

It turns out, of course, that much of what he’s told them is a ruse, and they gradually find themselves trapped in the house with a man intent on challenging not only their Mormon faith but belief in all religions, which he derides as imitative, in the same way that such commodities as board games and rock music are.  Even Jar Jar Binks is part of his argument.  Sister Paxton tries to mollify Reed as he becomes more insistent, while Sister Barnes is more willing to point out flaws in his thesis, which in truth has more holes than his certainty would allow.

He passes from insistence to threat, however, when he issues, though still in an ostensibly amiable tone, a demand that in order to leave the house they choose one of two doors that’s he’s labelled “Belief” and “Disbelief.”  It’s here that the film ceases to be an unsettling, if half-baked, theological debate and devolves into a fairly conventional scare-fest as Reed reveals his real intentions, as well as his fundamental conviction about the nature of religion, utilizing a so-called prophet (Elle Young) as an exhibit.  Mayhem, surprises, chases and reversals follow, making for a finale that satisfies genre expectations but strains credulity. 

There’s a digression from the eerily claustrophobic setting in a side subplot in which the young women’s superior Elder Kennedy (Topher Grace), concerned about their failure to return, follows their path trying to find then.  When he knocks at Reed’s door one might anticipate that he will meet a similar fate as that suffered by Scatman Crothers’ Dick Hallorann in Kubrick’s “The Shining,” but writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who must have been inspired by that film, instead content themselves with a cruel joke rather than a cruel death.

In this, as elsewhere, their script is smartly constructed, but though it’s more cerebral than most films of its kind it’s still intellectually shallow, in the end succumbing to the same grisly formulas as most of them.  It’s cannily directed, though, and though Justin Li’s editing drags at some points, Philip Messina’s production design, Betsy Heimann’s costumes and Chung-Hoon Chung’s cinematography give the images a gloomy, ominous air of rotting gentility, accentuated by Chris Bacon’s score.

None of which would matter if the three leads didn’t carry it off with such aplomb.  Grant is the dominant force in the equation, and easily the most memorable part of it.  Bu if were he working in a relative vacuum, the entire contraption would have fallen apart.  The strong turns from Thatcher and East provide the ballast that keep it in balance, even in the increasingly simplistic, formulaic final act.

“Heretic” might not be a game changer in its genre.  But it takes Hugh Grant’s move to the dark side to a whole new level.