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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

Deliver Us From Evil

DELIVER US FROM EVIL (Scott Derrickson). 119 minutes. Some subtitles. Now playing. For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NN


For legal purposes, Scott Derrickson’s latest supernatural thriller is loosely adapted from the memoirs of Bronx-cop-turned-demonologist Ralph Sarchie, but really it’s based on William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, with Sarchie playing the roles of both Father Karras and Lt. Kinderman. Whatever, right?

Eric Bana is Sarchie, a troubled family man who comes to believe a demonic force is responsible for a string of recent domestic incidents. To no one’s surprise – least of all the Jesuit priest (Édgar Ramírez) with a connection to one of the victims – that’s exactly what’s happening.

Director and co-writer Derrickson is on familiar ground here, having made The Exorcism Of Emily Rose, but one gets the sense that’s why he was hired – he knows the rhythms of false scares and creepy jump shocks, which is basically all a movie like this requires. Well, that and a creepy heavy. English actor Sean Harris (Red Riding, Harry Brown) fills that purpose nicely.

Composed almost entirely of scenes in which characters walk into dark rooms waiting to be freaked out – punctuated by the occasional snappy line reading by Joel McHale as Bana’s sidekick – it is this summer’s answer to The Conjuring.

It will make millions.

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