Why do demons always hang out in the basement? Don’t you want to see the rest of the house? I mean, you came here for a reason, right? Why always pick the dank shadows? Look, nice fluffy sheets, some food in the fridge, little fire to keep those demon…toes I’m guessing warm at night. We even have this cool thing called “light;” it adds so much to a room. Don’t you deserve just a little better? No, this demon hung out in an embattled cave in war torn Iraq just to find some embattled basements in war torn New Jersey. If I’m being honest with myself, I prefer the cave.
Sarchie (Eric Bana) and Butler (Joel McHale) are NYC cops. You can tell they’re street, cuz they talk the talk with every.single.syllable. It’s not that the homey accents are so bad – in fact I think they’re ok, but I am aware with every syllable these guys utter that Eric Bana and Joel McHale are doing accents. Fuhgetaboudit. Sarchie and Butler are special cops; they only handle the weird stuff – paranormal complaints, religious defamation and campaign promise reneging. Sarchie has a sixth sense for finding the weird cases. This is just about the worst use of ESP I can imagine –
“ok, I have the power to detect when a call over the radio will lead to a personal X Files episode.”
“That’s it? That’s your power?”
“Yup.”
“And we deliberately seek out these calls?”
“Yup.”
“Can I have another partner?”
“Sorry, my ESP can’t answer that.”
We’ve been inundated as of late with the possessed. They tend to drool and wear a lot of face paint. Ashen, huh? Guess that makes you a winter. Still, I’m not sure the drab is doing much for this look. The difference in Deliver Us from Evil is that it for the most 
part, it plays much more like a crime investigation than a horror. Scully and Mulder Sauchie and Butler arrive at the zoo in the black of night where evil is going down. A possessed woman threw her toddler into the pit between tourist and big cat. A hooded figure is in the pit. Sarchie investigates and finds himself face-to-face with a pair of adult male lions instead of a perp. Good one. And thumbs up for chasing the perp instead of getting a priest. Oh, there’s a priest involved (Édgar Ramírez), but he really doesn’t figure until the last act,
Where Deliver us from Evil falls is straight bad direction. The thriller wants to be scary and gloomy, but it isn’t. The editing pulls punches; it stops shy of a true scare. The scenes turn pitch black too quickly. The focus hinges more on the grotesque than the fear-inducing. Take the body found in a random basement. Clearly dead, but then movement inside – zombie? Demon? No, larva busting out. Ewwwww. The demonic spirit has clearly found its way into Sarchie’s life; ok, let’s see what it wants with his wife and little girl. Nothing? Really?
You can’t just show drooling, a little makeup and a crucified cat on a wall and expect it to carry the burden of horror. Nor can you expect to show a flashback or two and criminal pursuit with no chase and expect a reasonable cop thriller. Combining the two? Gets you closer, but not enough for approval.
Hey honey, is the cat dead?
I haven’t seen her since morn
There’s a demon in the sewer
Did she find and warn?
There’s evil on the prowl
Maybe they abducted
A myriad of tortures
My mind has constructed
Bad men might have stashed
I’ve looked everywhere
She could be in great pain
Oh, no. She’s over there.
Rated R, 118 Minutes
D: Scott Derrickson
W: Scott Derrickson & Paul Harris Boardman
Genre: CSI: Hades
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Supernatural cops
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Demons
