Deliver Us From Evil
CSI: Exorcism
Release Date: 22 August 15 | 118 minutes Distributor: Sony Pictures Director: Scott Derrickson Cast: Eric Bana, Edgar Ramirez, Olivia Munn, Sean Harris, Joel McHale
If you have a low level
headache, don’t watch Deliver Us From Evil. If you have a migraine, don’t even read this review. The latest chiller from Sinister director Scott Derrickson is undeniably effective but something of an ordeal to watch. Deliberately.
A genre mashup of exorcism movie and police procedural, it follows Eric Bana’s humourless and disaffected NYPD cop Ralph Sarchie, who teams up with Edgar Ramirez’s funky priest to solve the mystery of a woman who throws her baby into the moat surrounding the lion enclosure at a Bronx zoo. From the noisy, flashy, grainy opening sequence of soldiers discovering something weird in Iraqi catacombs it’s an assault on the senses. Search parties are perpetually investigating dark basements with torches, and horrible things are forever jumping out accompanied by loud music. Derrickson is nothing if not thorough when it comes to ticking genre boxes, throwing in snakes, spiders, bats, creepy Latin writing, an exorcism, a fetid corpse, an angry dog, a violent fish, a crucified cat, some troubled war vets, a crazed mother, an abusive father, an ex- junkie priest, a frazzled cop whose wife happens to be pregnant… and then there’s Marvin ( but you’ll have to wait until the third act to find out about him).
Its constituent parts are shameful clichés, but somehow as a whole they amount to an entertaining and nerve- shredding film. Eric Bana is stoic and manly as Sarchie and Ramirez is charismatic and appealing, though some of the dialogue looks like it was lifted from the Horror Film Dialogue Generator App (“I hate cats” says Bana when he enters the lions enclosure). Derrickson has a deft hand at creating atmosphere, though the almost two- hour run time is unnecessary and excessive, and with so much crammed in, by the time the rather long and noisy final act arrives Deliver Us From Evil moves from being tense and chilling to bludgeoning and stressful to watch.
It’s a genre rollercoaster ride – templated, repetitive and unoriginal, full of ups and downs but nonetheless effective at the one job it’s trying to do; make you jump and squeal. Rosie Fletcher Deliver Us From Evil is based on Beware The Night, a 2001 book by the real- life Ralph Sarchie.