Evil Should Have Delivered A Better Script And Made Better Casting Choices.

I was searching for a horror movie to watch yesterday, I needed something to make it feel more like October/Halloween. This autumn has sucked, it's been unseasonably warm, the leaves haven't fallen that much and I have yet to smell that sweet comforting scent of burning wood and dead leaves. 

Deliver Us From Evil seemed like a good bet, it's based on the supposedly true story of an NYC police officer who joins forces with a young unorthodox Jesuit priest to fight evil. And it had the added bonus of Joel McHale! I love that guy, I have a serious crush on him. He's handsome, charming, funny and has a wonderfully sarcastic wit. Swoon! As wonderful as he is, he was woefully miscast. Much like this autumn, this horror movie disappointed me. 

Our story opens in Iraq with three soldiers who find a tunnel that goes deep in the ground where they find a room with an altar a bunch of skulls on the ground and some strange writing on the wall. 

"Here I sit broken hearted..." This must be the invocation to summon the poop demon. Constipation, I rebuke you!

The three soldiers brought back some demon with them, I guess reading the cave wall made them more susceptible to it. Eric Bana plays some special ops cop by the name of Sarchie. He's your typical dark brooding cop who has a (not so) terrible secret that's eating away at him, it's causing a rift between him and his family. He likes taking the calls that get his adrenaline flowing and so does his partner, Butler, played by McHale. They go out on a series of calls that all tie in together and lead them to a horrible crime committed at the Bronx Zoo. Some lady threw her toddler into the lion habitat. I guess this is supposed to be a scary scene because the officers are searching for the lady in the zoo at night in the dark and a bear roars and some monkeys are screeching and jumping around. Pfft. Sarchie conducts a search in the lion habitat, even though he hates cats, and he finds a strange man in a dark hoodie painting a wall. The guy was there the whole time. Just painting the wall. In the dark. Guess what children? That's one of the soldiers who found the writing on the wall in Iraq! And he's possessed by some ancient demon that's making him write on the walls in blood, which he then paints over! And they have him made up to kind of look like Lord Voldemort! How chilling! Not really!

Now enter the Jesuit priest, Father Mendoza who also has a dark secret. He's not your grandmother's Father, he wears all black but doesn't wear the traditional uniform, no priestly collar for him, it's leather jackets, hipster beanies and longish curly hair for him. He likes his liquor chain smokes and likes to have sex with the ladies. I know, what a twist! His back story is that he was a junkie that found the priesthood then he relapsed and falls repeatedly into the vagina of a woman who's daughter he performed a failed exorcism on. He got her up the stick and she aborted the baby. Father Mendoza has an interest in the case of the lady who threw her child into the pit, she was his parishioner and he believes her to be possessed. After some banter back and forth Sarchie starts to believe that the lady is indeed possessed and works with the Father to find out what in the hell is going on. 

This movie is just a mess and has some the worst casting choices I've seen in a while. Olivia Munn plays Sarchie's wife, Jen. She plays it boring and one dimensional, her Jen has the personality of drying wallpaper paste and uses a light Noo Yawk accent that she slips in and out of only to lose it altogether. Whoever wrote this trash doesn't know how to write for a woman. Munn was given the stereotypical cop's wife dialogue. Lines such as "You're shutting me out" and because this is a movie about demonic possession, she harps on her husband for not attending church with her and their daughter. 

Poor Joel McHale, I'm sure this something he wants off of his IMDB page. Wardrobe tries to sleaze him up with a bunch of tacky tattoos, douche bag tee-shirts and a baseball cap, it doesn't work. He still looks like Joel McHale with a bunch of tacky fake tattoos, douche bag tee-shirts and a baseball cap. They even put a tattoo of a machine gun on one of his fingers, I mean, what the hell? In another attempt to make his character seem like a hardcore ball buster, they have him playing with knives. Not one single scene with McHale as Butler is convincing. Every time he was on screen I just cringed inward and outward, I couldn't wait for his character to be killed off. I felt such second hand embarrassment for him that I was hoping his screen time would have been 10-15 minutes tops, but he lasts much longer than that. His death scene included an awkward knife/axe fight that looked like something straight out of your local high school drama club's spring play. Oh Joel, you are so much better than this and you know it. I'm hoping this was just a "for the money" job.

After Butler bites it, it's time for Sarchie to confess his sins to Mendoza because that's the first step in fighting evil. Turns out Sarchie's dark secret was that he beat a child rapist/murderer to death and the regret and guilt are eating away at his soul. He killed a child rapist/murderer, who cares? I personally wanted to shake his hand and tell him "Good Job!". And off they go to fight the demon. The exorcism scene was a real bore, I will say this, I was impressed that they had the demon make his host eat his own leg. It made me gag and I couldn't watch. Mendoza and Sarchie cast the demon out and Sarchie renounces evil in all of its forms during his second child's christening that takes place in his home. I doubt the validity of this christening in the church's eyes since it wasn't performed in a church.

I forgot to mention that the demon is a big Doors fan. Throughout the movie Sarchie keeps hearing Doors music or seeing Morrison's lyrics written on a mirror. At least the demon has good taste in music, so I guess he can't be all bad.