The trailer for “Deliver Us From Evil” says the paranormal thriller is based on the “undisclosed” case files of real life New York City cop Ralph Sarchie. I’m not sure how producer Jerry Bruckheimer was able to make a major motion picture out of “undisclosed” files, but never mind. What matters is whether or not the movie provides an engaging two hours in a darkened movie theater.
It almost does, thanks to an interesting premise.
“Deliver Us From Evil” opens with three Marines engaged in a firefight in Iraq. As they make their way through sandy dunes and into a forested area, they discover a man-made tunnel. Descending into the darkness, one of the soldiers says, in a horrified voice, “What the [bleep] is that?”
Cut to Sarchie, played by Eric Bana, performing CPR on a dead infant he found at the bottom of a New York City trash bin. Sarchie has seen more than his share of terrible things, and he’s convinced there are no supernatural powers at work in the world, just the evil inside of man. This is his stance when he and his partner are dispatched to the Bronx Zoo to find a woman who threw her young son into a moat surrounding a lion’s den. He finds her, crazed and babbling, her fingers worn past the tips by digging furiously into the ground.
Enter Jesuit priest Mendoza, who claims the woman is possessed by a demon and needs to be exorcised. Not so, scoffs Sarchie; she’s off her rocker.
As related incidents pile up, and connections are made between the events in Iraq and the crimes in New York City, Sarchie’s beliefs begin to turn. He eventually reaches a point at which he can’t deny what he’s seen with his eyes.
Directed by Scott Derrickson, who also helmed “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” “Deliver Us From Evil” is more focused on character development than most horror films. Derrickson, who also had a hand in writing the screenplay, is just as interested in the change Sarchie undergoes as he is about the creepy goings-on – and with good reason: Sarchie makes a compelling subject. A former Catholic who long ago rejected his faith, he’s married to a beautiful and adoring wife and has an equally pretty six-year-old daughter who thinks he hung the moon. Yet the things he’s seen have caused him to draw into himself, and he’s held his family at arm’s length as he’s become more and more absorbed in his work. Derrickson does a good job of showing how the events Sarchie investigates change not only his thoughts about the existence of God and the nature of evil, but also his relationship with his wife and daughter.
Unfortunately, two serious problems overshadow the better qualities of “Deliver Us From Evil: a poor core performance and cheap horror hijinks.
Bana is an excellent actor with charisma to spare, as his performances in “Munich,” “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” and other films attest. But here, he seems like he’s simply reading his lines, not breathing life into them. His performance is surprisingly low-key, which saps the movie – which is focused on his character – of some of its dramatic oomph. At times, Derrickson cuts quickly to Bana and then immediately away from him after he’s said a line, giving scenes which should have more emotion a clipped rhythm. Somewhere along the line, there was a disconnect that affected his performance, and it impacts the movie as a whole.
Also, Derrickson layers the movie with false jump scares. Rather than allowing viewers to settle into the film’s somber mood (most scenes take place at night), he inserts sudden, jarring events and loud noises that have no place in the sequence. A good drinking game would be one in which the participants swallow a shot every time an animal pops into view and screeches. In one scene, Sarchie is literally walking down a hall, Derrickson cuts to a screeching cat, and then a visibly shaken Sarchie continues walking down the hall. Cheap tricks like this should be above an otherwise intelligent movie, and above Derrickson, who in “Sinister” showed he can drum up great scares.
(A good portion of the animal kingdom is represented in “Deliver Us From Evil,” including copulating bats, an angry bear, a pissed off cat, a rabid dog, and a snake that makes an ear-shattering hissing noise as it slithers across Sarchie’s shoe.)
Despite these problems, people who like thoughtful horror might enjoy “Deliver Us From Evil” to a degree. It probably has more Hollywood gloss on it than the real life story, but the focus on character development does give it more meat than most horror films. I just wish Bana had done better work, and that Derrickson has established a more consistent tone.
Two-and-a-half stars out of four. Rated R for bloody violence, grisly images, terror, and language.