Friday, July 4, 2014

Deliver Us From Evil

Oh Scott Derrickson, why did you do this? Why, why, why? He did so well with Sinister- a movie that I really enjoyed and consider to be one of the better horror movies to come out in recent years. Now he goes and releases this crap. To be fair, it's not the worst horror/thriller movie I've ever seen. But it's not great either.

I'm just going to warn you know- this review WILL have some spoilers. I normally try not to do that but for this I don't care. I'm sure most of you won't see it anyway. At the theater I went to, aside from my friend and I, there were only about seven or eight people there. Including a couple who brought a young child. The little girl couldn't have been more than three or four. At least she was well behaved (unlike some guys sitting behind us who wouldn't shut up at first, causing us to change seats) and mostly slept in her Dad's arms the whole time. It just drives me crazy when parents bring their kids to R rated movies. Especially ones like this. But that's a rant for another day.

Deliver Us From Evil is one of those movies that is "inspired by true events". Which really means, "Look, some of this actually happened. But mostly we made this shit up." It's based on a book written by Ralph Sarchie, who recounts his time as a NYPD officer and some of the strange cases he worked on. In this movie, Ralph is played by Austrailian actor Eric Bana (Munich, Star Trek 2009). Ralph is a police officer (married, with a young daughter) in one of the toughest neighborhoods in the Bronx. He and his partner Butler (played by Joel McHale. I kid you not.) investigate a series of crimes that are discovered to be connected by a demonic possession. Ralph, a skeptic with a lot of personal issues, eventually teams up with an unconventional priest named Mendoza (Edgar Ramirez) to try and stop this evil before it's too late.

I wish there was more to the plot but there's not. It's your standard horror/thriller that you've seen a million times before. There's nothing new here.

I'll start off talking about what I did like. I thought the actors did a decent job. Mainly, Eric Bana and Edgar Ramierz. The two of them looked like they were really trying. Which couldn't have been easy considering what they had to work with.

The movie actually started out strong for me. I thought the whole investigation aspect was really interesting. But then as the movie went along things got crazier and gorier. Just to warn you, there's several disturbing image (even ones involving animals). I like craziness and gore as much as the next person but this was too much. By the end it was so over the top that we laughed at how bad it was.

I also didn't care for the way Scott Derrickson shot the film. For one thing, he used that god awful shaky cam. Another is some of the scenes seemed almost blurry. I know he shot them that way on purpose and I get what he was trying to do, but it made me think something was wrong with my vision for a second. Not fun. He also dragged things out way too long. The movie was about two hours total but it felt like ten. Especially the exorcism scene at the end. I wanted to scream, "For the love of god! Just get the demon out of this guy already and be done with it!"

I obviously wouldn't recommend you see this in theaters. At least I had a free movie pass so I didn't waste any money on this. Deliver Us From Evil is okay if you want to get together with some friends, rent it from the Redbox, and have a few drinks. But that's about it. Hopefully Scott Derrickson's next movie will be better.

My Rating: 5.5/10

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