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DELIVER US FROM EVIL (A)
Director: Scott Derrickson
Cast: Eric Bana, Edgar Ramirez, Olivia Munn, Sean Harris
Running time: 118 minutes
You know an exorcism is coming in the cop/horror film Deliver Us From Evil, and you perhaps expect it to be a silly disappointment, as exorcism scenes so often are. But Scott Derrickson, the director, and his special-effects crew really deliver the creepy goods here, providing an apt climax for as taut and credible a movie involving demonic possession as you’re likely to see.
The film is inspired by the book Beware the Night, by Ralph Sarchie and Lisa Collier Cool. Sarchie has the unusual credential combination of retired New York City Police officer and demonologist, and Eric Bana plays him with a working-class grit well suited to the Bronx, where, as an officer, he stumbled onto a case that led him into occult depravity.
Edgar Ramirez plays the priest who gradually leads him to see that the people he is encountering at unsettling crime scenes are not merely garden-variety crazies. Sarchie’s domestic tribulations — Olivia Munn plays his wife — are boilerplate, and a few horror movie tropes, like a screeching cat, turn up, but for the most part Derrickson and the cast keep things fresh and scary.
A night-time scene at the Bronx Zoo will certainly persuade you never to be caught there after dark. And if you had any doubts that the music of the Doors is a direct conduit to Satan, they’ll be dispelled here.
