In Deliver Us From Evil, a mash-up of demonic horror and police procedural, Derrickson and his usual writing partner Paul Harris Boardman take a completely different approach. Scott Derrickson’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose took a forensic approach, blending a possession/exorcism story with courtroom drama.
Most films about possession, hauntings and other paranormal phenomena are structured as suspense or puzzle pieces, with a diagnostic or therapeutic approach toward determining what is going on and how to address it.
The recent “Slender Man” attacks are a tragic contemporary example. Sometimes, in the face of a particular atrocity, mundane explanations seem to pall, particularly with horrifying crimes that seem to lack sufficient motivation or where there is some kind of occult or quasi-religious element. Ordinary depravity and ruthlessness as well as mental illness are daily experiences for beat cops like him.īut when Father Mendoza distinguishes between “secondary evil” (the bad things people do) and “primary evil” (malign spiritual forces), it’s not hard to see his point of view either. Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana) skeptically tells Father Mendoza (Édgar Ramírez) that he thinks it’s crazy to “blame invisible fairies” for the bad things people do, it’s not hard to see his point of view. Why would a mother at the zoo throw her toddler over a railing into the moat of a lion enclosure? That’s the kind of horrible question that can look very different if you are a police officer or a priest.
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