Review of Deliver Us from Evil (2014) by Jesse O — 29 Oct 2014

I don't know if I would consider myself a Scott Derrickson fan or not. He certainly has a great handle on maintaining a genuinely creepy atmosphere, as both this and Sinister showed, but his track record hasn't exactly been stellar.

I liked both Emily Rose and Sinister, even if I had issues with how it ended up after a really promising start. I saw Hellraiser: Inferno ages ago and I can't even remember much about it. His remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still wasn't very good, in my opinion, but that might've had been in part to studio interference.

So he's definitely a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to the quality of the films he directs, or has hand in the screenwriting process. That's not saying the guy isn't talented, because he is, he just hasn't found the right outlet to truly reveal what he can really do.

I don't think he's really gotten a real honest-to-goodness chance to show what he can really do. Which is why this film is so disappointing. I had read the reviews and I wasn't gonna let that affect my opinion of course.

That's not to say I entirely agree with the reviews, because I did give the film an average score, but I just found the consensus to be actually quite on point. The film has creepy atmosphere, which is something that Mr.

Derrickson can do in his sleep. But, until the climax, with the actual exorcism, that's all the film is. Atmosphere can only take you so far if you don't have interesting scares, of which this film really doesn't have any.

I'm not saying that the film's jump scares won't make some people shit their pants a little, but I'm just saying that jump scares aren't an effective form to tell a horror story. That's just my opinion.

The jump scare relies on the element of surprise, the fact that you're not expecting it. That, in my opinion, isn't something that is legitimately scary as a person, once they move on to the next scare, they're likely to forget the scares that came before that.

That's the problem with jump scares, they're usually forgettable. Very easily forgettable in fact. It's just not a good way to tell a horror story. Any fool can do jump scares, as evidenced by the countless videos online of screamers.

I'm not saying Derrickson is a fool, but he's clearly much better than this. The atmosphere really is the saving grace because if the film didn't even have that, I can't even imagine how bad this film would've ended up being.

Because of that creepy atmosphere, you almost hope that the film has something good in store for you. It never comes, until the climax at least. The story, for something involving demons and paranormal activities and the such, is really fucking dull.

It's kind of impossible to care about any of the characters in the film, outside of Joel McHale's since he's the only one with a personality. One-dimensional as it may be, at least he has something.

Eric Bana's performance leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion. I've never thought the guy was an incredible actor, but he's clearly better than the effort he showcased here. The story is poorly developed, you're not given a real reason to care for anything that is happening.

There's nothing at stake, even though there IS something, supposedly, at stake. Going through this review, I'm finding myself liking this film less and less...is it really worth 2.5 stars? I'm not sure, because there was nothing, outside of the exorcism and the atmosphere, that I liked about the movie.

And this is almost 2 hours long. That's another issue. The script is already spread thin enough as it is, did this REALLY need to be almost 2 hours long? It's not like the characters have any depth, so you can't say that cutting it down would get rid of essential material.

Decided to downgrade the damn movie, it's worse as I'm actually going through it. Yes, the atmosphere is good but how good is that when the payoffs are as terrible as they are. Which brings us to the climax, where they saved their best for last.

The exorcism scene itself is very well done actually. Just exactly what one would expect an exorcism, in a horror film at least, to look like. So no complaints there. This is, EASILY, the best part of the movie.

There's no question about it, if someone tells you that it's not then they're fucking lying. By this point it's certainly a case of 'too little, too late' but at the very least it's a positive about this film.

Ultimately this is a bad movie made into a watchable one thanks to its creepy atmosphere and its climax. Really disappointing stuff right here.