Deliver Us from Evil 2014

Wesley Morris, Grantland: If you didn't know that Jerry Bruckheimer produced this movie, the boot prints on your eardrums would've clued you in. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: "Deliver Us From Evil'' expertly serves shivers, buckets of gore - and pretty much every cliche of the genre. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: A pretty routine and occasionally silly demonic-possession flick, which distinguishes itself by making us wait so long for the exorcism that heads may be spinning in the audience as well. Read more

Andrew Barker, Variety: Too silly to be scary, and a bit too dull to be a midnight-movie guilty pleasure. Read more

A.A. Dowd, AV Club: Deliver Us From Evil doesn't even believe in its tropes, whose moldiness no veneer of "authenticity" can mask. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: The movie is never boring. The atmosphere is decidedly unsettling and a viewer will jump a few times. Even the acting is fairly solid. Read more

Peter Keough, Boston Globe: Though Derrickson offers some new twists on old tricks ... the story soon devolves into variations of many movies we have seen before. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: Director Scott Derrickson demonstrates a knack for atmosphere but little sense of pacing; some sequences are effectively spooky (particularly one set at the Bronx Zoo), though just as many feel uninspired. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Derrickson made "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" nearly a decade ago, a rather better example of this genre. Read more

Adam Graham, Detroit News: "Evil" doesn't shy away from grisly images. But the scares don't last ... Read more

Kyle Anderson, Entertainment Weekly: Deliver devolves into a predictable, overlong waiting game. What's worse, it wants to convince you that it's a thoughtful meditation on faith ... Read more

John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter: While the supernatural side of the film suffers a flaw or two ... its central conflict works. Read more

Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times: A highly intense and effective mash-up of police procedural and horror show. Read more

Amy Nicholson, L.A. Weekly: Luckily for Derrickson, this devil hates light bulbs, causing Ralph to spend countless scenes wandering around in the dark waiting to be startled by a cat. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: A surprisingly strong cast and solid direction make all the malarkey in this horror flick tolerable. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: It's all cliched, of course, and has been since "The Exorcist" ... but it's still effective, perhaps more so with anyone who, like our hero cop, comes from the world of scented smoke and altar boys. Read more

Mark Jenkins, NPR: It's time for Derrickson, who also directed The Exorcism of Emily Rose, to master a new ritual. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: It's not the possession but the predictability that'll make your head spin. Read more

Neil Genzlinger, New York Times: Scott Derrickson, the director, and his special-effects crew really deliver the creepy goods here, providing an apt climax for as taut and credible a movie involving demonic possession as you're likely to see. Read more

Tirdad Derakhshani, Philadelphia Inquirer: Like other entries of its pulpish ilk, the picture packs lots of violence, a fair bit of gore, and plenty of cheap scares. Read more

Bill Stamets, Chicago Sun-Times: Director Scott Derrickson and his co-writer, Paul Harris Boardman, deliver a routine procedural with unremarkable frights. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Globe and Mail: If this movie doesn't leave you howling at the very idea of demonic possession, you're in dire need of an exorcist. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Just another dumb riff on The Exorcist ... Read more

Nigel Floyd, Time Out: An impressively staged climactic exorcism compensates in part for the random, far-fetched storytelling that precedes it. Read more

Scott Bowles, USA Today: Even horror neophytes won't be spooked by a film that looks as if it were shot with a smartphone and an Itty Bitty Booklight. Read more

Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture: After a while, the film's grim, desolate settings come off not so much as a landscape of moral squalor (as in Se7en), but as a tedious attempt to add gravity to a thoroughly generic horror tale. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: The film is said to be based on the case files of a real-life cop-turned-demonologist. Instead, it seems to have been inspired by a stack of rejected horror-movie scripts found in a studio dumpster. Read more