The good outweighs both the bad and the ugly in Deliver Us From Evil, the new supernatural crime thriller from director Scott Derrickson (Sinister) and producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates of the Caribbean).
After investigating a series of bizarre crimes, NYPD sergeant Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana) discovers a greater game afoot involving soldiers from the Iraq War, a painting company, and some creepy Latin symbology, the origin of which remains largely unexplained.
What sets this apart from most exorcism movies is the addition of the buddy-cop dynamic. Sarchie's partner on the force, Butler (Joel McHale), gets in a few decent one-liners which, as another reviewer put it, "feel as though they could've been ripped straight from a Community spoof of cop movies."
Whether that's good or bad depends on how you like your police dramas. For me McHale's part is a little too corny, but it does inject a little lightheartedness to the otherwise dour proceedings.
When Butler's not around, Sarchie pairs up with Father Mendoza (Edgar Ramirez), a Jesuit priest who specializes in the study of demonology. Together, they piece together the supernatural puzzle laid out before them.
It would be a well-written story if Derrickson and scribing partner Paul Harris Boardman had exorcised a few genre clichés along the way. I remain a Derrickson fan for his assured grasp on spooky atmospherics, but he doesn't approach the horror here with the same slow-burn suspense that made Sinister such a guilty pleasure. Deliver Us From Evil is good for maybe one or two jump scares. Otherwise, it just kinda feels like a poor man's version of David Fincher's Se7en.
On the whole the actors all provide serviceable performances, and the film itself is never actually boring despite a slew of clichés that ruin most of the scares. If you're in the mood for something dark and intense, you could do far worse than Deliver Us From Evil, but you could do much better too.
C+
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