A cop and a renegade priest battle with their inner demons in ‘Deliver Us From Evil’, from ‘Sinister’ director, Scott Derrickson. Peter Roche is not convinced.

In Deliver Us from Evil our heroes must battle imaginary demons while overcoming their own internal struggles, unlikeits name mate, the excellent 2006 documentary Deliver Us from Evil, which dealt with thoroughly real monsters.Directed by Scott Derrickson, who previously brought us the surprisingly good Sinister and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (a guilty pleasure of mine). Like the latter, this film also concerns that arcane, little practiced, Catholic rite that seems to possess so many filmmakers’ and audiences’ imaginations.

The film roles out all the tropes you may expect from a police procedural/exorcism flick. The protagonist (a very stoic Eric Bana) is a seen-it-all sergeant who pairs up with Mendoza (Edgar Ramirez), a renegade priest, and everyone’s got a whole load of baggage that starts to interfere with their personal lives. Oh, and it’s ‘based on real events’ (but totally not based on fact at all), a la every second horror film from the past decade. In this case it’s based on a book by NYPD sergeant Ralph Sarchie (he got lucky in the ‘who would play you in a movie about you’ game), who apparently came to believe that some of the criminals he was chasing were possessed. Indeed in the film the criminals are possessed – they’ve picked up a nasty demon while serving in Iraq four years ago and now, led by the sinister Santino (played by a brooding Sean Harris), they’re committing grisly murders across the Bronx.

Despite hurling all the jumps and the gore it can muster at the audience, the film feels frustratingly tired. Derickson is a young and talented director, one of only a few who have an interest in horror, so it’s disappointing that he didn’t seize the opportunity to innovate with his latest feature. Aside from the eye-rollingly predictable plot, the film features some solid acting from Bana, and a pretty electric performance from relative newcomer Olivia Horton. Props also for the score, rarely have The Doors sounded so malicious. Even if it is rather dubious that malign entities might be into Morrison.

Horror is a genre that is very difficult to pull off  – tellingly only one horror film, Silence of the Lambs, has ever won the Oscar for best picture. Indeed the best horror films over the last few years have made fun of themselves and the genre (think The Cabin in The Woods). Unfortunately Deliver Us from Evil makes the fatal error of taking itself very seriously indeed.

Deliver Us From Evil is released nationwide on August 22

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TgHldrvLrA