Eric Bana plays Officer Sarchie, a cop with a weakness and a strength. His righteous anger can get the better of him (Bana has plenty of experience “Hulking out”). But he also has a sixth sense for, well, sinister activity — think Peter Parker whose “spider-sense” tingles when criminals are up to something.
On this particular manhunt, the killer seems capable of things that Sarchie’s worldview cannot explain. (Sarchie the character — loosely based on the film’s inspiration, a real cop-turned-exorcist who wrote Deliver Us From Evil as a memoir, not a novel — is a lapsed Catholic, determined to explain away things that go “bump” in the basements of the terrified callers who ask for his help. But as this case leads him down into creepy cellars, his confidence dissolves in the glow of his own flashlight. Something wicked this way comes — has already arrived.
Bana’s leading-man status is the first of several remarkable things about Deliver Us From Evil. It’s been nine years since Spielberg’s Munich, where Bana played the Israeli avenger who learns that responding to evil with violence can hollow out a heart. It’s been ten years since he was cast as the conscience-burdened Greek hero Hector, dueling Brad Pitt’s Achilles in Troy. But his full commitment to this performance proves here that he’s still a fine choice to play a movie’s Muscular Conscience.
Here, Derrickson does both. He keeps us leaning forward in hopes of naming and catching the killer, but he’s also pulling a bait-and-switch. It’s a police procedural cake pan, but he’s filling it with horror-genre cake batter. So the result isn’t much like anything we’ve seen before.
Derrickson, his co-writer Paul Harris Boardman, cinematographer Scott Kevan, and a chillingly effective team of sound designers, mix up the ingredients; his actors — Bana, McHale, Munn, and the extraordinarily charismatic and confident Edgar Ramirez doing his first big genre pic — sell the results. They’re better than the genre requires.
Sarchie — the character, not the real guy — wants to shrug off the suggestion of demonic powers, but the deeper he descends into some overlapping mysteries, the more he sees things that he wishes he could un-see. This isn’t an idiot-factor horror movie, in which stupid people get what’s coming to them, or a monster lurks just waiting for somebody to stumble into his clutches. Derrickson already fulfilled that formula with Sinister — masterfully, in my opinion. Here, he’s aiming higher. He wants to bring a stereotypical American hero — a muscular cop, a family man, and a pretty rational guy — face to face with the devil, or pretty close. He wants to show us that our heroes aren’t strong enough (or smart enough) to take on the real enemy, not without expanding their worldview and learning where the real power to overcome evil comes from. It’s Obi-Wan Kenobi arguing with Han Solo about the Force all over again. Sarchie insists that he’s seen “nothing that can’t be explained by human nature.” Mendoza replies, “Then you haven’t seen true evil.”
Thus, Sarchie’s a skeptical Scully to the enlightened Mulder of Father Mendoza, a “plainclothes priest” who specializes in demonology and exorcism. Mendoza believes. He’s seen enough to know, and his faith fills in the rest. Sarchie’s seen enough to know too, but he actively resists the faith that would complete the picture — he knows that he cannot embrace the truth without it costing him, without it changing his head, his heart, and his choices.Just as Mendoza is, for this moviegoer, the film’s strongest character, so Édgar Ramirez is the actor who steals the show. He’s quiet, simmering, and introverted, which makes audiences lean forward. And he’s given a rich backstory — in part because Ramirez thought the character in the original screenplay needed work, so he inspired a rewrite by doing his own research on a Jesuit priest from Latin America.
As Sarchie, Bana is earnest and aggressive, seemingly the kind of cop hero that audiences love — which makes it all the more interesting that he never really takes control of the narrative, but remains a cipher, a guide whose doubts most people will understand.
Similarly, while Bana and Munn make a good-looking couple, the scenes between them were too slight to make me really feel the tension when the inevitable tests come.
Still, as Sarchie and Mendoza close in on the responsible party, Derrickson keeps things strange by keeping them true — drawing on the details of eyewitness accounts and recordings of exorcisms. Yeah, the big showdown with demons will come, which makes for sensational big screen spectacle; but Derrickson makes sure that nobody leaves the theatre feeling completely satisfied. Demons don’t get locked away like crooks, and you can’t shoot them. The movie provides steps forward for its characters, and this particular demon hunt reaches a blistering, explosive conclusion. But moviegoers will feel that they’ve just seen an origin story — an episode in which a cop finds new vision and confidence, and a partnership worth following is formed.
No, not everything works. Olivia Munn should’ve been given something more than the usual concerned-mom/”What about us?” cop’s wife, because she made an impression with what little she had to do. I didn’t get enough from McHale’s character for his big scene to pack the necessary punch. And the end-credits montage, going to extremes to disturb and distress, ends up merely trying our patience. This material called for something a little more subtle and, dare I say it? Sacred.
But the cast is strong, the sound design is fantastic, and everything looks great. As the craft of horror goes, it’s a scream; and as a game of “Catch the Homage” or Use Your Allusions,” it’s a hoot and a half. (Blade Runner fans — watch for the clever Roy Batty reference at the end.) And for the record, Mr. Derrickson, sir, if you’re listening: I would follow a whole franchise of Édgar Ramírez as The Specialist. (Jeffrey Overstreet, Patheos.com)
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