Horror Off-Season: Deliver Us From Evil

It's been a really long time since I've reviewed "Based on a true story" horror.  The last one was probably The Possession though I'd put dollars to donuts that I've hit something else in the interim.  Anyway, Deliver Us From Evil is a major horror film directed by Scott Derrickson, written by Derrickson and Paul Harris Boardman, and starring Eric Bana and Joel McHale.  Released in July 2014, the movie is based on the accounts of NYC police officer Ralph Sarchie as written in his book, Beware the Night.

The book details several mostly disconnected paranormal investigations conducted by Sarchie who was, at the time, splitting his life between traditional police work and working on spiritual cases.  To adapt it to a movie, several events from the book have been worked into an overarching narrative.  Also interesting is that while the actual Ralph Sarchie is both a cop and devout believer in the supernatural, in the movie he's been split into 100% cop Sarchie and the believer side is taken care of by unconventional priest, Father Mendoza.

The long and short of it is that I don't like this movie.  Now, I try to keep most of my write-ups on the shorter side and this is quite a bit lengthier than the others, but this movie is almost 2 hours long and just felt like it missed the mark so many times that I can't let it go.  I've even left a few points out because they don't fit and are pretty minor.  That said, there are good things; individual scenes here and there...makeup effects are good, and the acting was good to me.  I loved Joel McHale's character, and though Bana's accent seemed a bit over the top having listened to the actual Ralph Sarchie he emulated the real guy pretty well.

The basic premise is that while in Iraq, three marines find a doorway to demonic possession in a cave.  They bring this possession back with them and several years later NYPD Sergeant Ralph Sarchie gets involved in several seemingly unrelated cases which all lead back to one of the possessed marines.  In order to defeat evil he must conquer his own personal demons and ally himself with an exorcist, finding his own spirituality.

Conceptually, this movie is all over the place.  There's a possession story, a semblance of a cult story, a man haunted by his past story, and an ancient demonic story; all framed in a procedural cop drama.  It's like they made several movies with the same cast and decided to edit them all together into one movie.  Ideas and plots are hinted at then dropped, things happen with very little explanation...it just feels overstuffed.

From what I can gather, Derrickson and Boardman had begun working on an adaptation of the book set to be produced by Screen Gems, however Jerry Bruckheimer had also been working on an adaptation of the book being written by David Ayer, Bryan Bertino, and Bruce McKenna.  Some months after Derrickson and Boardman started their script, Jerry Bruckheimer's film production company partnered with Screen Gems.  Of the Bruckheimer writers only one of the three had ever worked on a horror movie before (Bryan Bertino wrote and directed 2008's The Strangers).  David Ayer had written Training Day, End of Watch, and S.W.A.T. and Bruce McKenna had written episodes of Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

I feel like each production company had begun writing very different movies and when they combined forces they mashed the scripts together, resulting in casualties.  Even at 2 hours long, the movie sprints so quickly between points that it never settles down to let any tension develop.  On top of that some of the dialog is so comically bad it completely breaks the sense of realism the movie seemed to be going for with the "based on a true story" presentation. Ralph Sarchie apparently hates cats, because every time there is any sort of feline on screen he can't stop himself from delivering a totally out of place line about how bad he thinks cats are.  Could be a house cat, could be a goddamned lion.  Doesn't matter.

Even with the story in shambles, I think it could've been at least a passable though meandering horror movie if it was visually more fun to watch.  Major problem being how dark the movie is.  It's almost like Derrickson got upset at people complaining about how dark Sinister was and decided to light half his movie with a cell phone flashlight just to show us what dark actually looked like.  Except since the pacing was so hurried these scenes weren't tense so much as frustrating because I couldn't see a damned thing.  There was some really uncomfortable gore at a few points, but that was about as effective as it ever got, visually.

Another thing that upset me was the really cheap scares.  Now, I don't necessarily mean jump scares.  I consider these quick startling shocks to be a valid tool, and like any other tool can be misused.  What I hated here was the screamer, which is done exactly like the flash video screamers.  Sarchie and his partner are watching security camera footage from the zoo when the bloody and beaten face of some guy appears on screen with a bit soundtrack sting.  This is the face of a child killer that Sarchie beat to death several years ago, and he is haunted by his guilt over the incident.  Later on, Sarchie is in his daughter's bedroom to the overused sounds of detuned Pop Goes the Weasel when he bends down to pick something up.  When he stands he sees that guy's gruesome nastiness leering over his daughter's bed.  Exact same scare, except it works better this time because there's some atmosphere and build up to the scene.  It was still kindof corny because of the soundtrack, but it was better than a screamer.

Then there's also the heavy handed use of The Doors, the band, to represent evil.  The possessed people repeat lyrics, songs kick onto the jukebox, etc.  Sarchie keeps hearing snippets of song and asking people if they heard it.  Like, half a dozen times.  I feel like in any other movie Sarchie's friends would've staged an intervention or convinced him to take some vacation time with how often he asks them if they've seen or heard something.  Some of the hallucinations are part of the haunted-by-his-past subplot but some are just The Doors, because the movie needs to make sure you understand that the spells written on the walls open a doorway to possession when read.

Finally, the paint-by-numbers exorcism upset me.  It didn't seem like there were any stakes to it when it happened in the movie.  The priest just outlines the simple, named steps of the exorcism and then they go through them one-by-one.  At some steps the demon makes token callbacks to Sarchie's and Mendoza's backstories to try to break their stride, but they get over it within like 30 seconds and go back to the exorcism.  I wasn't thrilled with it when I was watching the movie, but at least it was fairly well done visually.  But then I learned that Derrickson directed this, I was more disappointed because of how good Emily Rose was.  It's like he knew how to do it well, obviously, but he just wasn't on his A game.
Sorry for going on so long, but I just felt like this movie could have been good if it wasn't so unfocused and heavy-handed. Missed potential irks me more than straight up bad movies.

--PXA