Hugh Grant’s chilling new cat-and-mouse horror film Heretic is in cinemas now, but what songs feature in the film? Read on for all the info.
The film comes from directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who created and co-wrote 2018’s A Quiet Place, and stars Grant as Mr. Reed, a mysterious and untrustworthy man who answers the door to two young female Mormon missionaries who want to convert him to the church.
The woman are played by Sophie Thatcher (The Boogeyman, Yellowjackets) and Chloe East (The Fabelmans, True Blood), and as they spend longer in Mr. Reed’s house, they began to realise they are quickly becoming out of their depth.
In a four-star review of the film, NME wrote: “East and Thatcher are convincing as the Mormons who made a wrong turn and Grant is a loquacious delight in a role that could so easily have been a wad of demonic clichés. Lovers of Bridget Jones’s Diary always knew he was a cad but this is something else entirely. He’s never less than devilishly plausible and meticulous with every glance, grin and furrowed brow.”
Here’s every song in Heretic
As well as an original score by Chris Bacon (Wednesday, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), the film also has a couple of extremely noteworthy examples of needle drop pop music.
When Hugh Grant’s character has lured the two young women further into his labyrinthine house, he puts on a vinyl copy of The Hollies’ 1974 single ‘The Air That I Breathe’. As he attempts to expand on his theological argument, he mentions that even if the women don’t recognise the song, they would recognise Radiohead’s ‘Creep’, the chorus of which Grant then sings a snatch of.
Radiohead did in fact face legal action from Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood, the original writers of ‘The Air That I Breathe’, for the very similar chord progression and melody of the two tracks. Consequently, ‘Creep’ now features Hammond and Hazlewood as well as the five members of Radiohead on its official songwriter listings.
What’s more, Grant goes on to mention that in 2017, Lana Del Rey claimed that Radiohead were taking legal action against her for her song ‘Get Free’ and its own similarities to ‘Creep’, although it does not appear that the two parties came to any agreement about royalties.
Grant spoke to NME during promotion for the film, where he recalled singing ‘Creep’: “I don’t do it very well. I think it’s a very difficult song to sing. I researched it a bit and they kind of hate it. One of them sketched it off, they recorded it and they never really bothered to put on proper lyrics [that] they liked. Everyone went mad for it and called for it at every Radiohead concert. Very difficult to sing. I didn’t crack that one.”
‘Creep’ makes a later appearance in the film too, and the end credits play out to a languid, pedal steel-heavy cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’, performed by one of the film’s stars Sophie Thatcher.
The full list of songs in Heretic is:
Ipana Troubadours – ‘Just Like a Butterfly (That’s Caught in the Rain)’
The Hollies – ‘The Air That I Breathe’
Radiohead – ‘Creep’
Sophie Thatcher – ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’
