Deliver Us From Evil  ★★★½

IN 2001 a book called Beware The Night was released. It was based on the memoirs of a former police officer but was nothing like you would expect.

NYPD Special Operations Sergeant Ralph Sarchie was already an experienced officer when he first encountered crimes that he believed defied typical or logical reasons.

Over the years he became convinced that occult or even supernatural forces were real and eventually left the force to pursue this line of thinking within the Catholic Church’s investigative ranks.

The 2014 horror/thriller Deliver Us From Evil is “inspired” from accounts in Sarchie’s memoirs which proves a double-edged sword in terms of the audience’s overall experience.

There is no doubting that Scott Derrickson’s film is well made and acted and has more than its share of creepy moments and jump scares.

For the first half of the film we can entertain the thought that some of the events could be true. This adds to the intrigue because they are still part of some kind of reality that would result in police investigations.

But, as events become more difficult to believe, you start to be pulled out of the film thinking about where the line exists between Sarchie’s accounts and Hollywood fiction.

Eventually the script gives up any pretence to presenting debatable or different perspectives and becomes a full-throttle horror complete with a wall-shaking exorcism. This may just be a visual device to demonstrate the intensity of the experience but it doesn’t come across that way.

Australia’s Eric Bana is pretty good as Sarchie and Joel McHale has some good one-liners as his partner, but Edgar Ramirez never fully registers as a defrocked priest who convinces Sarchie of their place in the battle with ‘primary’ evil.

Stand-out acting performances are given by supporting cast members Sean Harris, Chris Coy and Olivia Horton who have to convince us their actions may be the subject of demonic possession.

The best of these is Harris who creates genuine tension and fear of the unknown before going to another extreme for the final act.

You might think I don’t like the film but the opposite is true. Perhaps it could be seen as a guilty pleasure but there are many sequences, including at night in the Bronx Zoo,  that deserve to be seen alone with the lights off.

I’ve probably seen Deliver Us From Evil three or four times and would happily watch it again tonight.