SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for the film Heretic . If you have not yet seen the new horror movie , proceed at your own risk! When Hugh Grant ’s Mr. Reed is first introduced in Heretic , he seems like a perfectly normal guy.
He takes a weirdly long time to open the front door to his house, but he comes across as genial and intelligent...
and it takes a minute to recognize that he has some terrifically sinister intentions. By the time you get to the second act of the movie, you recognize that nothing he says can be fully trusted – and that provided an exciting acting opportunity for the actor to do a full deep-dive into who the character really is. Prior to the arrival of Heretic in theaters, I had the great pleasure of dissecting the truth about Mr.
Reed via interviews with the filmmakers and star, and they all revealed the extra special work that went into bringing the furtive antagonist to life. While talking with writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, I pointed directly to the fact that even his name doesn’t seem to be real (“Mr. Reed” is a homophone-esque slant on “Mystery”), and Woods noted that there is an interesting evolution in Hugh Grant’s villainous performance that sees his true face slowly revealed over the course of the film leading to that wild ending : That's a great question, and I love that the name led you there because in our mind, that is not his actual name.
Who knows what his actual name is. You're.
