One committed suicide, another seemingly stalks the night somewhat aimlessly, and the wife of one decided to throw her newborn child into a moat around the lion enclosure at the Bronx Zoo. South Bronx detective Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana) and his adrenaline junkie partner Butler (Joel McHale) are investigating a series of cases they can’t seem to solve or explain involving a trio of Iraq war veterans and their families who have been demonstrating violent behavior. It might not make the end of the year best list, but it has destroyed everything else that it’s in competition with. Blending the best elements of exorcism narratives and police procedurals, the film contains a sustained energy and focus that delivers a precise clinic in showing how films in this genre should be made. A step above last year’s BOATS-themed and similarly scary The Conjuring, Deliver Us from Evil is also the rare kind of horror film that’s actually about something on a subtextual level and not filled with empty jump scares around every corner. While the validity of the “true story” at the heart of Scott Derrickson’s Deliver Us from Evil can be hotly debated and contested, the film itself is a masterful work of modern horror and one of a very small handful of scary movies in recent years to be unsettling and terrifying.
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