Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

Where do I begin on this?

Deliver Us From Evil is director Scott Derrickson's 5th film in the director chair.  Derrickson himself is a hit-or-miss director.  When he hits gold (Sinister), it's really impressive.  However, when he misses (The Day the Earth Stood Still remake), it's perplexing that a director of his talent failed to conceive a worthwhile film.  After viewing Deliver Us From Evil, it's more in the ballpark of the latter.  The film attempts to be many things it's not.  One side is a story of redemption and struggle.  On another, it's a cop investigation film.  And on the final side, it's a possession story.  It sounds like an original idea, and one that could be rather impressive.  It starts off intriguingly, but then it devolves into a wide array of jump scares and knife fights.

Deliver Us From Evil chronicles the true story of Detective Ralph Sarchie, a tough-as-bricks cop who lost all faith in God.  Then, he investigates a case that ends up proving the existence of true evil, and, of course, he slowly begins to unravel the truth of whether a Devil exists.  Apparently, the film is base on real life cases that did happen and the officer did write a book on it, though the film stylizes all of it.  After reading up on it, I thought the film could've been infinitely better had they actually followed the book.  Unfortunately, the film doesn't go for a unique film, and end up feeling like a run-of-the-mill horror escapade.

And that's the first major flaw in this film.  It takes a rather unique premise and makes it into a by the books horror film.  It has a lot of horror tropes thrown in, and it's not the good ones.  There's the obligatory exorcist scene.  The main character regains his faith in God.  All the scares in here have a big "boom".  Something always happens to the cross.  And that's just scraping the surface of this film.  It's not necessarily boring, but it's been done multiple times and by better horror films.

The acting from the most part ranges from "Good" to "Laughable".  Eric Bana is good, not great, as Sarchie.  I can't fully fault him for the fact that he wasn't given anything to work with and some of the lines themselves are hilarious.  "You're in my house?" Sarchie says casually as he realizes that a possessed serial killer is lurking in his home.  Yeah, the script was awful.  The acting from the two possessed folk is downright laughable.  I began grinning at the sight of the possessed lady and her attempt at being menacing.  The main antagonist, the possessed guy, is not anywhere close to being scary, and around the time he begins a knife fight with Joel McHale, I didn't laugh.  Instead, I groaned.  How could a film with this much promise fail!?

*SPOILERS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH*

Joel McHale is the only highlight in this film.  He's used more as a comic relief character throughout the most part.  However, he gets very limited screentime and he exits the film in the aforementioned knife fight between him and the demon.  The quickest tonal shift seen in film history, I think.  It goes from horror to action in a blink.  It just became laughable.  I thought that if you're going for a horror vibe and want to throw in a knife fight, you should make it much more brutal rather than the tactical method both fighters used.

*SPOILERS DONE*

Then, the film attempts to balance a cop investigation film with a paranormal film.  Think an episode of Cops being spliced in with scenes from the Exorcist and you can get this film.  Only thing different, is the locale.  Once you get passed the different scenery, you get every horror film made.  The ending exorcism is nothing interesting.  However, I'll say that the inclusion of "The Doors" music did catch my attention...in the worst possible way imaginable.  They never really explain what was the point of it's inclusion.  They explained why most of Sarchie's visions were used (He had superpowers?  That's just outright stupid), but they never explained what significance the Doors had.  Was it there in an attempt to seem original with the unoriginal content, Derrickson?

Now, while I've been seemingly ranting on this film, there are some notably good things in this film.  Whether you're laughing unintentionally or not, the film is pretty entertaining.  I wasn't really bored to tears by this film, so isn't that worth something?  Also, while the film did rely on a lot of horror tropes, one good deviation from the usual tropes is the priest.  Usually in any horror film, the priest is some nice guy, who has barely any faults.  In here, the priest is a highly flawed man, and it felt refreshing after being bombarded by the usual steps.  However, there's one thing that happens to his character that makes him less interesting during the exorcism scene.  And, as mentioned before, the acting is good for the most part.

Overall, Scott Derrickson attempts his 2nd homerun (after hitting it with Sinister), but strikes out.  Deliver Us From Evil is just as generic as it's name(for a horror film).  It relies heavily on tropes that have been done to death now, and isn't exactly new.  In fact, the only inventive things to be scene are minuscule by comparison.  The film attempts to mold a cop drama, redemption, exorcist themes all together and the final product is less than rewarding.  Ending it on a positive note, the film isn't boring at least.

4/10