Film review: Deliver Us from Evil
Opening in the Czech Republic the day before the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is scheduled to start, the religion-oriented horror film Deliver Us from Evil is likely to arouse some interest because the festival will present a special award to William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist.
However, the two films are nowhere near comparable to each other, and sadly, after more than 40 years, it seems filmmakers have learned little from the horror classic. This latest foray into the world of the occult refers to God on many occasions, but demons and Satan are noticeably absent from the discussion, as we realize that good will inevitably triumph over evil, with no room left for any kind of creepy ambiguity.
Just like The Exorcist, the story starts in Iraq, but whereas archeologists were digging around the desert in 1973, today the country seems to signify only one thing: war. That is why the group of characters are all soldiers, and when they go underground to follow the enemy, they are not confronted with religious militants, but with what we can assume is an evil spirit of some kind.
To read the full review, visit The Prague Post. Deliver Us from Evil goes on wide release in Bulgaria on July 4.
(Still of Eric Bana and Édgar Ramírez in Deliver Us from Evil. © 2014 Screen Gems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
