“I’ve seen some horrible things but nothing that can’t be explained by human behavior,” says New York police officer Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana). “Then you haven’t seen true evil,” replies Father Mendoza (Edgar Ramirez) as he tries to prepare Sarchie for dealing with the supernatural for the first time in the horror/thriller, Deliver Us From Evil.
Investigating a series of crimes involving a domestic abuse case and a mother trying to kill her child at the Bronx Zoo, officer Sarchie realizes that both cases involve three men who served in Iraq together and came back home under suspicious circumstances. Father Mendoza tells Sarchie that he believes the mother, Jane (Olivia Horton), who tried to murder her own child, is really suffering from a spiritual sickness…possession. Sarchie just waves it off, telling the unconventional priest she’s going to the “looney bin” where she belongs.
However, when some of Jane’s bizarre behavior, like scratching at the hard ground till her fingers bleed and speaking in a foreign tongue, are the same behaviors as the abusive husband in the domestic abuse case, Sarchie realizes they are connected and begins to slowly believe that Father Mendoza might be right.
Together, Sarchie and Mendoza work to find the third Iraq soldier, who it seems is possessed by a powerful demon commanding the other two to do his bidding. They must find the missing soldier so that they can perform an exorcism and stop the evil before it harms, or even kills, anyone else. Things get personal when Mendoza warns Sarchie that because he’s now involved and can actually sense the evil entity – during the course of the investigation, Sarchie keeps hearing weird music and seeing demonic flashes – he and his family have become a target.
Inspired by actual events, Deliver Us From Evil strives to be a creepy crime/supernatural thriller but suffers from uneven pacing and unoriginal scares. Eric Bana seems miscast, unfortunately, as the street-wise, tough, no-nonsense Bronx cop Sarchie who slowly begins to find his way back to the Catholic faith. With his Bronx accent going in and out and constantly looking surprised, it will be difficult for the audience to accept him as Sarchie.
Edgar Ramirez delivers a solid performance as Father Mendoza, the priest who’s an expert on exorcism and wants to bring Sarchie back to the faith. The best scenes in the film are between the two men. Both Olivia Horton and Sean Harris are extremely effective as two people possessed by demons. Horton’s wide-eyed stare and erratic behavior are sure to give the chills to most moviegoers huddled in dark theaters.
The film’s look and production are strong, capturing the darker and uglier side of the Bronx in New York. One area where the film has a major problem, however, is going from the streets of the city and the police station where Sarchie spends most of his time working to his home and family life which feels forced and incredibly awkward. It almost seems as though Bana is a stranger and an intruder in the family scenes.
The other weakness is in the climatic exorcism scene that comes up way short when compared to the horror classic The Exorcist or even director Scott Derrickson’s earlier possession film, The Exorcism of Emily Rose. That said, there are still enough conventional scares in Deliver Us From Evil to effectively creep out audiences looking to have a shiver or two go up and down their spines for a matinee price.
GRADE: C
Deliver Us From Evil is rated R for bloody violence, grisly images, terror throughout, and language.
