Deliver Us from Evil

When I was first starting this blog, I planned to review Deliver us from Evil between The Conjuring and Annabelle.  My reasoning was that the real-life Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana) worked heavily with the real-life Warrens, so I could kind of squint and pretend I have a trilogy.  However, now The Conjuring 2 is long out, and Annabelle 2 and The Nun are on the horizon (as of editing the former is out), so I’m still doing this because...meh, why not?
That said, this has fairly little to do with the real-life Ralph Sarchie as best I can tell from glancing over his Wikipedia page.  I imagine that if the man had murdered a suspect it would have been mentioned.  But, instead, Wikipedia tells me only that he was raised Catholic, his faith waned, and his faith was restored when he became a demonologist in addition to being a cop.

To deal with the actual movie, however, my feelings on it aren’t that different from my feelings on the original Conjuring.  I’ve said in the past that I don’t relate to movies about demons and the devil, because my beliefs do not include the concept of ultimate good or evil.  If a villain doesn’t have at least some selfish motivation, or a belief that their doing the right thing, then I just can’t relate.

That said, however, this movie lacks even the pretense of being well made or compelling.  We get a bunch of clichés thrown together in a movie that seems to have been shot without a lighting crew, because I can’t tell what’s going on half the time.

Officer Sarchie is a cop with a strained family life because of his work, and a lapsed Catholic dealing with the Problem of Evil.  However, a woman (Olivia Horton) at a zoo goes crazy and murders her own son.  Sarchie is told by the woman’s recovering addict Priest (Edgar Ramirez) that she’s possessed.  The two turn into an unlikely duo, hunting down a possessed marine (Sean Harris) who is turning people into murderers whenever they read ancient text.

Could they at least pretend to take “based on a true story” seriously?  If it was that easy to cause people to become possessed, teenagers would use it as a prank all the time.

Even the exorcism scene at the end gives us nothing new.  There’s no acknowledgement that Sarchie might have seen The Exorcist, or serious attempt to subvert the expectations of the audience.  Just “well, time for an exorcism scene.”

There’s a few creepy images from time to time, but for the most part it’s just a standard cop movie with a supernatural overtone.  People are chased, the exorcism happens in the interrogation room, bodies are found, etc.  Nothing to see here.

This is a bad movie.  The people involved all deserve better.  I’m among the few defenders of Eric Bana’s version of The Hulk, and I feel that he can really pull of great work.  But this is a project that no one cared about, and already I doubt anyone remembers.