For decades, cop dramas have depicted the South Bronx as the devil’s playground. Deliver Us From Evil takes that idea all too literally. But then this slow-witted occult thriller takes everything literally, from the Catholic rite of exorcism to Jim Morrison’s shamanic posturing.
The movie is derived from a book of the same name by former NYPD Sgt. Ralph Sarchie, who reportedly came to believe that some of the criminals he faced were literally possessed. Wisely, director and co-scripter Scott Derrickson made the on-screen Sarchie (stolidly intense Eric Bana) a skeptic.
The cop is a lapsed Catholic who gave up on God when he was 12, although he does believe in the power of his internal “radar” to locate the most interesting cases. He’s also, unsurprisingly, wracked with Catholic guilt. And not just about how he neglects his wife, Jen (Olivia Munn), and 6-year-old daughter, Christina (Lulu Wilson).
Of course, the role of skeptics in movies like this is to be brutally converted to a magical worldview. Just as the job of 6-year-old daughters is to be threatened by the story’s archvillain.
That fiend is introduced in a prologue set in Iraq, four years ago. During a battle, three American soldiers stumble upon the entrance to a spooky, ill-lighted subterranean chamber. Naturally, they enter, thus setting the precedent for a movie where Sarchie is forever exploring gloomy basements and other dark, ominous crypts. At one point, he even walks into an actual lion’s den.