Deliver Us From Evil

Still no scary movies for 2014

Our story begins with New York Police Officer Sergeant Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana), and his partner Butler (Joel McHale) being called on what seem like normal police calls; but only get stranger as their day goes on. It goes from a simple domestic disturbance, to a woman throwing her child into a lion's den at a zoo. All of these events start becoming linked with one extremely evident cause. Demonic Presence. With this information Sarchie teams up with a priest named Mendoza (Edgar Ramirez) to put an end to it all. Unfortunately, he might not be able to stop it before it reaches his wife (Olivia Munn) and their daughter at home.

So the story line here likes to take on the guise of "inspired by actual events/accounts" meaning that the people in this movie saw an exorcism done at a police station and chose to embellish for profit. I refuse to believe in things of this nature, and when people make a movie about something that may or may not have happened to them once upon a time ago I am in my full rights to call bullshit on them. I know there are a lot of people out there that believe in garbage like this and if you choose to believe it that is your prerogative I am not calling it wrong. What I am calling wrong are these people exploding a window during an exorcism at a police station, having a man controlling lions with words, and having this sergeant go through all of these paranormal events as a "real" accounting of the story. That is the main problem I have with the story, the embellishing. I honestly just wish that they would give me the events as they actually happened, but I guess all we would have then are people throwing children into a lion's den and an exorcism, instead of all of this boring "intrigue." Most of the time horror movies that are "based on actual events/accounts" can make me forget about this by being scary or entertaining; but this one kind of fell on the other end of that spectrum. 

Away from my main problem with the story being "based on actual events/accounts bullshit," I guess I should talk about the story line on the basis of what I think it was. Fiction. It really is the same old song and dance of horror movies here. Possession, exorcism, animals acting weirdly, inanimate objects moving on their own, more crosses in one movie than there are in the enitire Vatican. Same stuff, all except for our movie's protagonist being a cop. He is your average horror movie protagonist skeptical (a.k.a. sane), brash, dark history; but he is also a bit more compelling than your average Josh and Renai Lambert ("Insidious" reference because I hate that series). Him being a cop makes him SUPER skeptical at things like this, since he has seen a lot of people doing horrible things. He is distant from his family because of the job he works and the things he has seen in his time. He himself has done some horrible things and has a problem with rage. Even his partner as an adrenaline junkie wearing a Boston Redsox hat in New York to get a thrill is intriguing. His partner gets into knife fights with the people they are arresting and if there is any truth to that at all (unlikely as it is, since this entire movie was probably made up) that man was a badass and a half. 

The real problem here was with the acting (as per the norm in horror movies) the only person giving a good performance in this movie was Eric Bana. That is unfortunate since he seemed so bored while you were watching him on screen. Joel McHale tried stepping away from his typecast for a bit, and after seeing what he looks like trying to "act" he needs to step back into his typecast. There is this funny scene (yes, I was the only person laughing in the theater) where Eric Bana calls Joel McHale a "bad actor" because of something to do with the story line, and it looks like it hit Joel hard in a real way. Olivia Munn does the most mediocre performance of her career, Edgar Ramirez joins her mediocrity.

The main question here (as always) is: was it scary? There are some genuinely frightening moments in the movie, but overall it was way too slow paced to be considered scary. It was definitely leaps and bounds more frightening than the travesty that was "Oculus," but still not something I would put in the scary category. Movies about possession and demonic presence tend not to scare me that often unless they are a bit more over the top (see "The Exorcist" and "The Conjuring"), so I guess this didn't have a very good chance of scaring me from the get go. It could be scary to people that actually care about things like this, and if you are one of those people you should go see it. 

Final Verdict: Netflix It It is frightening enough for you to look at when you have nothing better to do, but that is about it. The bad part of all of this is that it might be considered a black mark on a great actor's (Eric Bana's) career.