Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

You know when a movie claims to be based on true stories and you can’t help rolling your eyes? That’s Deliver Us From Evil. 
Bar some effective spooky imagery, the movie itself is very average. A cop (Eric Bana) uncovers a case that quickly reveals itself to be centred around possession and otherworldly interference, and it becomes an obsession. 
It’s slow paced and not in a way that feels intentional; it’s a horror movie bottled in a crime drama, and as such it can't quite figure out whether to pace itself over episodes or to keep the action up. The lighting suffers a similar condition, where the whole thing is lit in the same way as those “gritty” tv shows that really need to ease up on the blue tint and maybe turn on a lamp or two. The performances are fine, mostly - Eric Bana carries the whole damn movie, and you need it in contrast to people like the Jesuit priest who is…cringe-worthy. It’s so close to nailing the tone - it could go full cop drama or full horror movie the whole way through, but instead it can’t make up its mind.
As a whole, it’s far stronger when it sticks to one side. When it decides to either be a cop show or a spookfest, it was hard to be too mad at it. Sadly, it wasn't often that a clear genre would emerge. It never really let the emotional weight of the story carry propel the plot - that would have been a lot less derivative than lazy scoring and an overrealiance on jump scares, pushed over far too long of a run time.
But some of the spooky shit - it’s good. I don’t generally like possession movies, but this one evoked an atmosphere that got me a little jumpy. It’s a lot of those jump scares and things hinted by the framing, feeling really similar to something like The Conjuring. While I wasn’t a fan of those in-your-face scares and general laziness, I did love the detail given to a lot of the visuals. If only it weren’t so dark and blue tinged and goddamn long.
Rating: 4.5/10 - Alongside the occasional cool bit, there were some really tortured references to The Doors, and just enough crap that should have been cut. It's a forgettable horror movie, and a bit of a slog to get through, but it was coherent and there was enough decent stuff to balance that out if you were forced to sit through it.

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