Deliver Us From Evil *Snap Judgement* (2014)

Review

Ralph Sachie is a New York detective working the night shift in some pretty rough areas of the Big Apple. He has problems on the home front, with his wife and young daughter feeling neglected due to the time Sachie spends on the job. To say that Sachie has a few things on his mind is an understatement, the Detective is mentally coming apart with a secret that is eating away at him and the general level of evil he sees on the street each day. Not helping is his "radar" that guides him to interesting cases much to the amusement of his gung ho partner Butler. The pair respond to a domestic disturbance one evening that gets pretty violent. They follow up at the local zoo hunting for a deranged chick who has thrown her toddler into the lions' den moat. Also interested in the second case is an enigmatic priest, Father Mendoza, who the chick refers to as a "specialist".

Sachie starts to pick at the seams of the seemingly separate cases and discovers a link, it involves three ex-Iraqi war dudes who discovered something terrifying one night while hunting enemy troops at an Oasis. Anyways Sachie starts to have visions, finds the cases to have some very weird angles, and is warned by Mendoza that he might be a target due to his "radar". Sachie's spider-sense is tingling, it's going to go into overdrive as the Detective discovers they are dealing with demonic possession, and worse an invasion from "the other side". Can Mendoza and Sachie halt the demonic entity responsible or will Sachie's family pay the price for his interference?

I'm always up for an adult horror movie that tries something slightly different. Deliver Us mixes in possession with the Police investigation thing, throwing large amounts of Se7en styled atmosphere into the equation. The sometimes convoluted plot, did they have a coherent script prior to shooting? - wasn't as engrossing as I was hoping for but I still had a good time, though there are flaws in the flick. Okay Deliver Us wasn't the dog's bollock the Distributor lead us to believe it would be, but equally the flick was better than the Internet trolls and url tough guys would want you to believe. On that subject I'm amused by the criticism levelled at the movie by people who openly confess to not having seen it, frack me IQ levels are plummeting in the Western world! Let's get down and see how this one purrs.

Director Scott Derrickson has his possession tactics nailed, the dude did of course previously brought us The Exorcism of Emily Rose so he's got form in the sub-genre. There are some genuinely chilling moments in Deliver Us as Derrickson delivers not only one possessed person but three! I was on board the depictions going down and am happy to sign off on this aspect, okay no pea soup or 360 degree head spins, but chilling moments abound for the movie voyager. The only downside to this aspect for mine was the "based on a true story" angle, which brought amused and wry laughter from the largely adult audience I caught the movie with. Sorry Boredwood no one believes that schlock anymore, try something else yo! Got to say Derrickson kept things understated, didn't go for the shock scenes, but still managed to have some people hiding their eyes as demonic attacks and exorcisms went down with some regularity. I wouldn't compare Deliver Us to The Exorcist, that's very lazy reviewing, but would be quick to add that the Director is going for something on the unique side of the ticket stub.

Okay in other horror tactics Derrickson is to be honest a bit hit or miss; he generally fails to build the chill factor between major scenes letting the audience off the hook. There's a hell of a lot of jump scenes early in the movie, which had me wondering what insanity was about to be unleashed, thankfully Derrickson abandons the approach after the first act, perhaps deducing his audience for this one aren't low attention span teens. We then get a lot of scenes in confined dark spaces as the Director focuses in on audience unease at what might be hidden in the shadows, perhaps trying to emulate the vastly superior The Descent. We finally hit the exorcism chain gang as the Director threatens, and then fails, to unleash an avalanche of quick shock scenes. By the end of the movie the horror elements disappear into the dark night whimpering with their tail between their legs. Overall there are some great horror moments, but they are few and far between, as a horror flick Deliver Us is never going to be the greatest success of the year.

Where the movie does kick a few goals is as a gritty police thriller with a mystery to be unravelled, Derrickson could have jettisoned the horror elements to be honest and made a vastly superior movie. Sachie and Butler discover the nature of what they are dealing with slowly, and if it had involved drugs or something else I think the movie would be headed to the top of the class. Unfortunately the Audience is well aware of what is going down, ancient evil discovered in an underground cavern in Iraqi possesses soldiers, well before Sachie works it out. When the true nature of what the Detective is facing is revealed it's more of a humdrum moment than a true revelation. But anyways there was a pretty good police drama battling to get out here, the horror trappings were a misstep in my opinion by the movie Producers.

Eric Bana (Sachie) delivers a strong performance that does raise Deliver Us from the usual level of only adequate acting in horror flicks recently. Bana nails the bromance his character has with his partner and the budding relationship with the priest Father Mendoza. Equally Bana hits all the right moves with the pressure he is under impacting negatively on his wife and daughter. While probably not award winning Bana does demonstrate with this performance why his star is on the rise in Hollywood, and should secure him additional roles.

One aspect of the movie I did want to mention in passing was the prologue scenes, involving the small unit of U.S troops in Iraq. Why exactly three soldiers only would be hunting a group of insurgents is never explained, that should have been focused on. Equally in one scene there's a whole mob of big spiders running down a tree trunk, uhmm why? - spiders take no further part in the movie and hence their insertion in this one scene sticks out like dog balls. And finally why exactly did we have this prologue, it reminded me of something they might pull in a The Exorcist movie to indicate an age old enemy, this was never implied in Deliver Us.

Since I'm out of room here in finishing I have to say I had a good time with the flick, though to be honest I was mildly disappointed after viewing a couple of trailers prior to checking it out. On the bright side there weren't any walkouts from the cinema I watched the movie in, equally no one was irritatingly checking their mobile during the movie, and everyone was pretty quiet. This is normally an indication that the audience was digging what was on the screen before them. Overall I thought the pacing was slightly wrong, did enjoy the adult orientation, and thought some of the plot needed a rework. If you like horror movies skewing to an adult audience then Deliver Us From Evil is worth checking out, though I would wait on it hitting disc.