Deliver Us from Evil is another exorcism movie from exorcism vet, Scott Derrikson. Eric Bana stars as a cop in the Bronx, who stumbles on a call where a woman has thrown her kid into a lion’s den, then started clawing at the ground like a crazy person. Bana’s character thinks she is just mentally ill, but then he arrives on other weird calls where he finds connections to the first one. He then meets a priest who has had first hand experience with these types of events, so then they team up to Deliver Us from Evil. Like how I threw the title in there? That’s because it is a fairly stupid title.
Deliver Us from Evil is a decent horror flick, but nothing to go rush to see. It had all the cliches you’d expect from a movie like this, and a lot of other critics out there are comparing this movie to The Exorcist and Seven. First off, every exorcism movie can be compared to The Exorcist, and yes, it does have a Seven-like quality to it, but I found it didn’t have the raw, dark tone that David Fincher brings to his movies.
Eric Bana does a good job playing this cop who of course doesn’t believe in all this crazy demon talk, even if he can’t make sense of it all. Olivia Munn plays his wife, which she doesn’t have much screen time, but they had to throw the wife and daughter aspect to the story. Joel McHale randomly plays his partner, who is a knife fighting, tatted up cop, which is a bit of stretch. Edgar Ramirez plays the priest, who has a bit of a darkside, but it mainly works for the story. Overall the actors did well in their parts, even if that New York accent went in and out sometimes from coming from Bana’s Aussie voice.
Perfect for a date movie, but also perfect to wait for a Redbox kind of night. Some of the creepy dark scenes worked, and some of it just got tiresome. Check out my video review below to hear me talk about the movie more.