Written and Directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods | 100 min | ▲▲△△△ | VOD

Time and again I’m reminded that I’m not a horror purist. What that means is the cliches of horror movies don’t wash for me — where a gorehound or a hardcore horror fan will give a reasonable genre entry a pass, I won’t. I’ll be more forgiving of a thriller, a science fiction, or western that leans on familiar tropes but still entertains. Horror has to be a lot better than average for me to get on board.

I was especially hopeful for this one. The unlikely casting of Hugh Grant as Mr Reed, inspired. He’s a harmless-seeming gentleman living in a house in some midwestern town. One rainy evening, just around twilight, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) show up at his door. They’re young Mormons, looking to spread the word. They can’t come into his house unless there’s a woman present, but he insists his wife is there making a blueberry pie in the kitchen so in they come.

This opening segment is fantastic. It’s fully awkward and peculiar, the parlour where they sit is gloomy and windowless, and despite Mr Reed’s natural Hugh Grant-like charm, he’s also a bit creepy. He launches into a discussion of religion and challenges the women to debate him. The conversation travels here and there, with Mr Reed pointing out how much Christianity has borrowed from other faiths in its stories and characters, the same way pop music cannibalizes all its best ideas. The women are able to match and parry some of his thrusts, so to speak. But as time goes on, they feel more and more uncomfortable.

The suggestion this film is going to be a Christopher Hitchens debate with some added horror is entirely delicious, a real psychological battle of the wills between a radical atheist and two true believers until someone brings out an axe. I was all aboard for that movie.

You know that’s not really what awaits. At a certain point there’s going to be a series of preposterous traps, a damp dungeon and other gothic silliness and a terrific movie fuelled by ideas is going to be tossed aside for something akin to Saw or Barbarian or any horror that locks vulnerable women in a basement somewhere like we’ve all seen a million times.

It’s such a shame, because Grant is having a ball in this stage of his career playing weirdos and “baddies.” Maybe someone more patient with horror tropes that show up here in the second and third act would find something valuable where this goes, but to me the picture is a badly missed opportunity, almost annoying for its wasted potential.