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Longlegs

FBI Agent Lee Harker investigates a series of gruesome deaths connected to a mysterious figure known as Longlegs. As the case unfolds, unearthing evidence of the occult, Harker discovers a personal connection to the merciless killer and must race against time to stop him before he claims the lives of another innocent family.

Longlegs Review

Since their earliest days, horror movies have relied on a handful of essential ingredients to deliver their thrills and chills. From jump scares to disturbing imagery, the only thing that has changed is each film’s specific usage and the degree to which it relies on those ingredients. Over the last two decades, it seems as though the art of eliciting fear from audiences with subtlety and creativity has been largely lost, replaced by the current crop of genre filmmakers’ race to see who can be grosser and more explicit. Enter Longlegs.

With its minuscule budget and cast of unknowns, Nicolas Cage and Blair Underwood notwithstanding, Longlegs harkens back to the days when the cinematographer and score were more essential than gallons of dyed corn syrup and an FX budget to rival a small nation’s GDP. Despite the fact that the film is a little underdeveloped, with far too little Cage, and loses a bit of focus in the third act, by going back to the basics, Longlegs delivers a delicious ever-present tension as the audience sits on the edge of their seats waiting for the shoe to drop.

Its quintessential 70s horror chic cinematography, with long lingering shots framed ever-so-slightly off-center, and director Oz Perkins’s (son of Anthony Perkins – aka Norman Bates in Psycho) keen sense of timing are the film’s true stars. However, its classically understated vintage score and some surprising performances shine nearly as brightly.

Obviously, seeing Nicholas Cage as a demonic serial killer is Longleg’s big draw, and the only disappointing thing about his disturbing performance is its abbreviated nature. He’s one part creepy, three parts demonically terrifying, and all Nicolas Cage. That said, despite having a relatively underwhelming resume of which her turn as President Whitmore’s daughter in the critically panned Independence Day sequel,  Maika Monroe surprises as Agent Harker. With Cage only appearing briefly, the bulk of the film lies on Monroe’s shoulders, and she is more than up to the task.

Even though the outward trappings of her role as an FBI agent combined with the time period in which Longlegs is set, not to mention the film’s tone, understandably invokes parallels to Clarice Sterling and Silence of the Lambs, Monroe’s Harker is wholly its own creature. The actress beautifully portrays the socially awkward agent with a grounded sincerity and realism that precludes what could have easily been a caricature. As such, she is the perfect straight man to the film’s bizarre goings-on.

Unfortunately, Longlegs flounders a bit under the weight of its concept and what appears to have been very limited access to Nicolas Cage. As a result, everyone’s character development is fairly rushed, with Cage’s character suffering the most. It also suffers from a botched reveal of its twist in an unnecessary and redundant montage that’s overlong, overly expository, and completely robs the film’s final minutes of virtually all of its momentum.

In spite of this and a rushed two-dimensional relationship between Harker and a catalyst character, Longlegs dishes out a quick and fun fright night worth seeing.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Lady Cops

• Nitpickers might take umbrage with yet another “strong female” cop-like character leading a film. However, not only have there been female FBI field agents since the 70s, but Lee Harker is a socially awkward mess and not some unstoppable bad@$$ who was clearly written to be a man until studio interference. Her feminity actually adds a nice layer of vulnerability to the story.

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A Quiet Place: Day One

An angry and despondent cancer patient, Sam, who is spending her last days in hospice care, and a lonely law student, Eric, come together as the world as we know it ends. The unlikely duo must now navigate the deadly streets of New York City (nearly as deadly as in real life), avoiding unstoppable monsters while searching for a way out.

A Quiet Place: Day One Review

Prequels are not a new phenomenon. There have been numerous films set before the events of the books and plays upon which they are based, but the first-ever prequel to another film is 1948’s Another Part of the Forest, a prequel to 1941’s Little Foxes. The impetus for such films is understandable both monetarily and artistically. Studios get a built-in audience that makes the film’s commercial viability that much more likely, and fans get answers to burning questions only hinted at in their favorite programs.

Unfortunately, the modern prequel, arguably starting with Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999), has become a cinematic crutch used by creatively bankrupt movie studios looking for a quick and easy buck. Their proliferation, along with unwanted and botched sequels and spin-offs, have ruined beloved franchises and cost companies like Disney billions of dollars.

This brings us to today. Set a little over a year before the events of the John Krasinski/Emily Blunt original, A Quiet Place: Day One may be one of the most unnecessary prequels ever put on film. It adds nothing to the lore of the original two in any meaningful way, as virtually every significant event or discovery happens off-screen. Have you ever wondered how it was discovered that the aliens used sound to locate their prey? Too bad. It happens off-screen. Were you hoping to watch the American military engage in what we know will ultimately be a losing battle against the invaders? Off-screen. Had you hoped to learn of the origins of some of your favorite characters from the original two movies? You guessed it – off-screen.

Instead, A Quiet Place: Day One introduces fans to two original characters: Sam, a cancer patient at the end of her life whose sole motivation is to experience a single moment of reconnection to her past before she dies, and Eric, an English law student who is alone and afraid. The result is a familiar film with less compelling characters than the original and a story that is thereby harder to bond with emotionally.

Nothing is made any easier by the choice of lead characters. The originals benefitted from the family dynamic that was central to the plot. Audiences needed little dialogue and less setup to identify with and be invested in the stakes immediately. Conversely, in Day One, Sam is an understandably angry and jaded woman who spends the entirety of her introduction being aggressively offputting. While friendly and helpful, Eric isn’t heroic or particularly skilled, and his panic attacks that happen at just the wrong time are offputting, even if they are understandable.

The film does a commendable job of finding moments to help the audience bond with the two, but it’s too little, and the moments often feel too contrived to elevate the film from popcorn flick to genre-defining. What it did get right was its choice of performers. Both Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn are excellent. They manage to give far more nuanced performances than the script calls for, and it is the two of them, as well as Michael Sarnoski’s generally good pacing and excellent sense of continuity, that pulls this film together.

A Quiet Place: Day One might not be worthy of an official recommendation as Worth it, but it’s certainly not boring, at least not often, and offers sufficient thrills to justify purchasing an IMAX ticket and some popcorn.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Putting the Male In Damsel

• Eric’s character (a white male) is neither a coward nor incapable. His fear is proportional and understandable, but there are two moments when he begins to panic and needs Sam to be the rock that rescues him from his fear.
  • Conversely, Sam (a black female) is never out of control. That said, her particular circumstance lends itself to a nihilistic acceptance of her fate, making her behavior and general demeanor throughout the ensuing horrors more understandable.

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The First Omen

Since childhood, Margaret has been a ward of the Church. When the American Cardinal with whom she grew up has her transferred to Italy to be confirmed as a nun, she feels blessed. However, it doesn’t take Margaret long to begin to realize that something is very wrong with the faithful surrounding her.

The First Omen is a wonderfully shot piece of horror cinema. It lovingly channels the cinematography and pacing of its 1976 progenitor and mostly eschews today’s trend of thousands of fast cuts in every scene. These long continuous shots held on performers masterfully dripping with silent subtext allow for the slow-building tension that fans of the genre used to enjoy before horror became a race to see who could get the most graphic and disgusting gore past the MPAA.

Aided by a perfectly haunting score and equally spine-tingling performances, The First Omen has all of the talent on both sides of the camera needed to cement itself as a worthy heir of the franchise, one that could usher in an entirely new era of horror that thrills rather than repulses. Unfortunately, it somewhat fumbles this with a handful of counter-intuitive gross-out moments that arrest the tension that had been building. Even more disappointing is The First Omen’s underwhelming conclusion. Prioritizing the franchise’s continuation over solid storytelling or continuity, it wraps things up with a quick and easy cheesy bow that might as well read “To Be Continued.”

However, where the movie truly fails is in its needless and blasphemous retconning of Damien’s origin (i.e. the entire film). It unnecessarily dumbs down the Church’s leaders in order to propagate a narrative full of Kola Superdeep Borehole-sized logical (let alone doctrinal) inconsistencies… because.

WOKE ELEMENTS

The Old Girl Network

• The First Omen is a heavily female-centric film, with the handful of men in it being relegated to tertiary supporting roles. However, this does not a woke movie make. While almost certainly, the behind-the-scenes discussions leading up to its creation were peppered with progressive clichés like, “It’s about time,” the film is crafted in such a way that the female-laden cast makes complete sense. Furthermore, the male characters aren’t sacrificed at the altar of beta cucks to make the lady folk look better.

Thirty Pieces of Silver

• The movie’s greatest sin, earning most of its BASED score of 0%, is only its entire premise. There is no way to explain it without spoilers, so be forewarned.
  • ***SPOILERS*** The film has retconned Damien’s origin so that he is no longer born from a jackal and protected by Satanists. Now, a misguided cult (that “goes all the way to the top”) within the Catholic Church brings about the AntiChrist.  They so fear the “freedom” and “loss of power” born from the growing secular movement that they believe the only way to once again “gain the trust” of those whom they’ve lost is to breed young women with demons and the resulting female offspring with their own demon father. They contend that the fear, death, and depravity fomented by the AntiChrist’s reign will be such that it will drive people back to the Church. ***END SPOILER***

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The Good:

• The sense of atmosphere and horror is masterful
• Really pushes the edge of graphics capabilities
• Clever callbacks to other Remedy games

The Bad:

• The thought space is a clever idea that’s not as good in execution

The Ugly:

• Someone spilled a couple of drops of wokeness into this lake

Alan Wake II

Alan Wake II is a surreal horror story about a malevolent Dark Presence, powerful enough to use fiction to reshape reality but dependent on the creativity of a human author to provide the new narrative. The character Alan Wake is an author caught up in the Dark Presence’s ploy to enter the real world and remake it physically.

In the original game, the Dark Presence trapped Alan’s wife in the “Dark Place” (Think the Upside Down from Stranger Things) to draw him in, then used her as leverage to make him write (sorry if this is a spoiler, but you should play the first Alan Wake the first game before reading this if you don’t like it). Alan’s power to rewrite his story was limited to the rules of the horror genre, which is not known for its happy endings. In a last act of desperation, Alan defeated the Dark Presence by writing an ending that set his wife free but left him trapped in the Dark Place.

Fast forward thirteen years (the same number of real-world years between the release of Alan Wake and Alan Wake II), and Bright Falls once again finds itself host to supernatural events that signal a return of the Dark Presence.

Alan Wake II introduces a new protagonist, Saga Anderson, a young black female FBI agent. She is partnered with agent Alex Casey, the detective whose life became inextricably intertwined with Alan’s fiction during the first game’s events.

For the first part of the game, players play as Saga, though at a certain point, Alan Wake re-enters the story and becomes a playable character as well. Players will then switch back and forth between the two, eventually allowing them to switch between them at will, playing through each one’s unique but interwoven story.

Alan Wake II’s Story

The central narrative of Alan Wake II is a complex, self-referential tale designed to defy the player’s expectations. In one of the narrative’s more meta components, within the story, the story’s story itself is discussed and dissected.  Alan Wake is both a character and the author of his own story.

He has the ability to alter the narrative to change outcomes but is otherwise constrained by the clichés and tropes of the horror genre, for if he deviates too far, the changes that he makes will not hold.

Confronting Enemies in Alan Wake II

While set up as a third-person shooter and classified as survival horror, Alan Wake II tries its best not to conform to any one genre of game.  Combat is only one part of the gameplay.  A good portion of the game is also comprised of investigative work, a variety of puzzle-solving, and interactive cinematic cutscenes.

Most of the enemies are ghosts or the feral “Taken” (ordinary people whom the Dark Presence has corrupted). They are shielded by an aura of darkness, making them invulnerable to conventional weapons.

Players must utilize light sources such as a magical flashlight (which uses consumable batteries), flashbang grenades, or road flares to dispel the darkness. Weaker enemies are outright destroyed by the light, while others need to be killed by physical weapons after the shield is gone.

To do this, players will have access to handguns and other firearms that can be acquired along the way, but because this is a survival horror game, players will be constantly on the verge of running out of needed items.

There simply are not enough munitions in the game to defeat all of the enemies with direct confrontation. Players will have to rely on stealth or occasionally just run for their lives to get to safe spots where the light is too bright for the darkness to enter.

Alan Wake’s Puzzles

As mentioned earlier, Remedy really likes to use the video game medium to present an experience that wouldn’t work as well anywhere else. Although there are some straightforward solve-the-clue-for-the-password-type puzzles, the developers also like to use gameplay loops and optical illusions to keep the player mentally off balance. For example, one area is mostly flat and open, with some free-standing walls to walk around. Players have to weave their way around the walls in a particular order or risk passing the same identical space repeatedly for infinity.

The Mind Place and Writers Room

Both Saga and Alan have special rooms to which they can retreat during the game, and while they both serve the game mechanics as surrogate menu systems, each also offers their own unique gameplay and narrative opportunities.

Character Progression

Although it’s a very minor component, Alan Wake II provides opportunities for character progression. However, rather than being earned through experience or completing missions, improvements in capabilities and weapons come through discovering hidden objects or symbols within the levels. Players who take the time to search every nook and cranny will be rewarded with a slightly more manageable horror experience.

These elusive upgrades are perhaps the only element that lends any replayability to Alan Wake II, as once you’ve experienced the story, there’s not much else to go back for.

Case Board

Investigations on the case board use classic police drama visuals like push pins and yarn to connect Polaroid photos, bad photocopies of documents, and handwritten notes. Players need to arrange these elements in the proper order to complete each case. This can sometimes be frustrating because the placement isn’t always obvious or intuitive.

More often than not, investigations devolve into randomly trying to stick the evidence to the board to find the correct spot. In some instances, casework is an entirely optional part of the experience; if the player can figure out what to do next simply by picking up clues from the dialogue, then they never need put pin to cork.

However, there are times in which progression is completely dependent upon assembling the case on the board.

Controlling Alan Wake

This game uses typical twin-stick third-person shooter controls for combat and getting around. There aren’t any awkward gamepad mappings, and for the most part, both the movement and aiming controls are simple and intuitive.

Regarding other activities, the controls are a little less so.  Moving the cursor around area maps and case boards with a control stick feels clumsy and unrefined. These interfaces were obviously designed with keyboard and mouse controls in mind and not reimagined for a game controller experience.

Graphics

Alan Wake II is a beautiful game. Each environment is unique, fully detailed, and carefully thought out. Everything from tree branches to mud puddles looks so realistic that it’s easy to forget they’re works of art rather than real organic things. Character models are similarly convincing, with well-articulated motion capture that extends all the way down to facial expressions and lip movement.

Shadows play a big part, not just in the visual style but also in its narrative. The interplay of shadows and light is almost breathtakingly dramatic, thanks to ray-tracing and volumetric lighting effects.

However, Remedy is known for marrying live-action recordings with its game graphics. Many of this game’s cutscenes feature the live actors the in-game models were based on, and this jarring back and forth serves to throw the fidelity gap between the computer-rendered and real people into sharp relief.

While real actors certainly do a much better job conveying emotion than their digital avatars, the frequent switches between the two are jarring and immersion-breaking.

Sound

Alan Wake II is a masterclass in sound design. This game features incredibly effective use of multi-channel surround both for establishing atmosphere and for spatial awareness.

Each setting has its own unique soundscape, whether it’s wind whistling through trees, gentle rain hitting concrete at night, or the otherworldly whispers of the dead somewhere in the periphery.

The effects themselves are well-chosen and perfectly implemented. Something as simple as the sound of the water being disturbed somewhere just over your left shoulder as you carefully tiptoe through a flooded basement will likely make the hairs stand up on the back of your head.

Alan Wake II’s original score is nothing short of a phenomenon.  Far from a simple backdrop for various sequences, the music is woven into the narrative.  Each song’s lyrics tell a part of the story, sometimes even serving as clues or instructions for what to do next.

The game designers use a broad spectrum of styles, from etheric trance with crystalline female vocals to pop ballads with compelling hooks and even Swedish metal with melodic vocals and absolutely blazing guitar solos.

As an aside, the metal parts are performed by Poets of the Fall as their in-game altar ego band, Old Gods of Asgard.

Presentation

The horror part of this survival horror game is predominantly psychological. While there are enough elements of gore to justify the Mature rating, the game relies more on atmosphere and disorientation to make your skin crawl.

A pervasive sense of dread and unease is reinforced with dark visuals and creepy sounds throughout. The jump scares are wickedly well-timed to take advantage of quiet disarmed moments, and even the player character will sometimes express shock at them.

Performance

This game offered a relatively polished experience in its initial release build. There were very few obvious bugs or glitches. We only encountered one game-breaking bug during one of the last scenes that required us to reload the game to proceed.

Final Thoughts

Our playthrough clocked in at just over fifteen hours, but it was so densely packed and thought-provoking that it felt like a much longer experience.

This game absolutely deserves the awards it received for best narrative and art direction. Between the foreboding atmosphere, eerie content, and jump scares, the game did more than enough to earn its “horror” label, but the action sequences were also compelling and fun.

Without giving out spoilers, the “Summoning” sequence was one of the coolest things we’ve played in years. The convoluted story eventually rewards you for your time and attention and almost perfectly pulls off the “nothing is what it seems” motif. Despite its flaws, this is one of 2023’s best games.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Barring any deeper investigation into development and casting than what you see below, Alan Wake II rates delightfully low in wokeness. While our playthrough did not necessarily encompass 100% of the optional content, the authors were obviously more concerned with writing a compelling story than advancing a political or social agenda. Every woke element observed feels perfunctory rather than passionate.

On the one hand, Saga is an ever-present reminder that someone caved to pressure to forcibly “diversify” the cast, but on the other hand, it ceases to be distracting very quickly and does not hinder the story or gameplay.

DEI

• Okay, so let’s talk about the big ol’ elephant in the room, Saga Anderson, the black female FBI agent who is the player character for half of the game. Make all the arguments that you want that this was some kind of random creative choice, but we’ve got screenshots that say otherwise. At some point after creating and initially casting the character of Saga Anderson, the developers decided to (or were forced to) race-swap her from a white woman to a black woman to check a box. She’s supposedly a descendant of some of the all-white cast of the original game. We get it, Remedy. There were quotas to be met, and screechers would take away your birthday presents if you dared release a game with an all-white cast in 2023.  While it’s obvious, due to her supposed heredity alone (but mostly because we actually know who the original actress was and have a picture of her in-character with a name label), this role was originally written for a white woman, the writers have retconned a hinted relationship between her and the elusive character Mr. Door to possibly explain her skin color.

Anti-White Racism

• During one of the last sequences in the game, as Saga is struggling against her own inner thoughts, she refers to Alan Wake writing her into the story as “another white asshole deciding what I get to do; how I get to do it.” A single little sliver of anti-white racism is apparently supposed to lend to Saga’s authenticity as a “real” black woman in 2023. Reverse the races in that comment, and there’s no way Epic Games would have dared publish this game.

Misandry/Toxic Feminism

• When we’re first introduced to the character of Saga Anderson, she’s riding in a car with Alex Casey on the way to Bright Falls to investigate a ritual murder. Just before they arrive, Alex places her in charge of the case.  Five minutes later, at the crime scene, the sheriff’s deputy tasked with escorting them assumes that Alex Casey, the male senior agent, is in charge of the investigation and asks him how he would like to proceed.  Saga takes the opportunity to shame him for the assumption, and we are then treated to an awkward moment where the deputy begins stammering excuses and apologies. How dare he assume she was not in charge of the investigation that she literally was not in charge of six minutes ago?

Gay Agenda

• The female agent from the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC) finds an opportunity to casually mention, with all the subtlety of a “You know how I know you’re gay?” joke, that she has an ex-wife. It’s completely irrelevant to everything, but box ticked, I guess?

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Five Nights At Freddy’s

A troubled Mike finds work as a nighttime security guard at the now-defunct and dilapidated family fun center, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. It doesn’t take long for Mike to discover that something is very wrong at Freddy’s, but can he survive long enough to find out what that is?

Starring Hunger Games alumnus Josh Hutcherson, Five Nights At Freddy’s is moderately to well-paced with serviceable performances and sufficient scares. Hutcherson, who has struggled to find a place in Hollywood after his turn as Peeta in The Hunger Games, plays Mike Schmidt, a down-on-his-luck 30-something who is raising his much younger sister alone. This relationship, as well as Mike’s tragic past, which the movie wastes no time introducing, carries the film more than anything else.

From the first scene, Mike is made a sympathetic character for whom it is impossible not to root, and that empathic web is only drawn tighter as the first act continues. This not only firmly places the audience on Team Peeta but also raises the stakes and the audience’s sensitivity to the well-done but otherwise mundane cinematic horrors about to be visited upon Mike, et al.

Five Nights At Freddy’s isn’t breaking much new ground as horror films go. Like many that have come before, much of its momentum relies on inconsistent character behaviors and people making decisions that real people wouldn’t. Even casual fans of the genre will be able to anticipate the telegraphed scares and general story beats.

Far from perfect, it also suffers a bit in the second act from a subplot that is practically forgotten about before it begins and adds nothing but runtime to the core story. Furthermore, the film’s performances are all just north of adequate. Hutcherson, who gets the most screen time, seems capable of internalizing only two or three emotions. However, despite his limited range and unlike your blocks of wood like Halle Bailey in The Little Mermaid remake, Hutcherson mostly makes it work, largely thanks to the conducive material that demands only as much as he has to give.

Elizabeth Lail, best known for her 10-episode stint as Princess Anna in Once Upon A Time, arguably gives the movie’s best and most nuanced performance as the enigmatic police officer Vanessa. Unfortunately, the quality of her performance is in spite of the material instead of being bolstered by it.

Yet, as predictable and average as it is, Five Nights At Freddy’s also manages to be entertaining. It provides sufficient scares for those who like that sort of thing; the story is engaging enough for the audience to care, and the novelty is sufficiently fun. With a magic mix of mundane and just enough with a dash of something extra, we recommend Five Night At Freddy’s as Worth it, but with the caveat that it is worth streaming on Peacock rather than spending money on a night out.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Hutcherson’s Mike is relegated to a supporting role in the finale so that two female characters can handle the main antagonist. This hurts the film’s momentum, keeping it from building to a full crescendo. Thus, we knocked a few points off for wokeness.

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“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” – Matthew 6:13

The Immaculate Conception is a term many have heard and most misunderstand. Were you to ask 100 people, 99 would likely believe it to be the conception of Christ. However, one of the four Marian dogmas, The Immaculate Conception, is actually that of Jesus’s mother, Mary. It is the belief that, in order to have been an appropriate vessel for Christ, Mary was conceived without the stain of Original Sin.

Deliver Us

When, in a remote convent, a nun with a troubled past suddenly and inexplicably finds herself pregnant with twins, a fallen priest who is a specialist in distinguishing legitimate claims of the divine from fraudulent ones is enlisted to determine if her children have been sent from God or are a result of something more mundane and scandalous. Little did he know that he would find himself in a battle for the salvation of mankind.

Deliver Us is an independent film from Magnolia Pictures, which, thanks to its association with the Wagner/Cuban (as in Mark Cuban) Companies has significantly better resources than many independent film studios. The result is that films like Deliver Us boast superior production value and actors whose faces you recognize, even if you don’t necessarily know their names.

From its score to its judicious and skilled use of primarily practical effects, virtually every technical aspect of Deliver Us is indistinguishable from its “big budget” brothers and sisters. One exception would be that more care and thought was put into its cinematography than most of its big-name contemporaries. From sweeping drone shots to skewed close-ups, cinematographer Issac Bauman, who is best known for his work in music videos, seamlessly aids the narrative and, in conjunction with a very effective score, helps to shape much of the film’s vibe.

Deliver Us is further helped by some very empathetically present performances. Its leads do an excellent job of twisting the audience’s emotions as their characters experience numerous alarming events. However, the secondary characters are equally impressive, and all involved manage to elevate the material.

So, let’s talk about the material. Deliver Us is often frightening, occasionally deeply disturbing, repeatedly sacrilegious, and regularly inconsistent in narrative quality and attention to detail. There are some minor yet blatant oversights, like a bloody gutshot wound with no bullet hole in the victim’s shirt, and some character issues that are either oversites or intentional choices that make some secondary characters and even the protagonist appear unnecessarily offputting and in opposition to the rest of their character development.

For instance, the protagonist is Joshua, played by Lee Roy Kunz, a Catholic Priest who has succumbed to the temptations of the flesh and has fallen in love with and impregnated a woman. He intends to leave the priesthood because he recognizes that his actions have consequences that require a shift in his responsibilities. That’s all well and good.

However, his superior, a Cardinal or Bishop (I’m not Catholic, and if it was mentioned, I missed it), seems disappointed, not that he has fallen but that he is not choosing to abandon his child. The moment passes so casually between the two that it seems more like a misunderstanding of basic Church doctrine than it does an intentional narrative choice as if to say, “This sort of thing happens all of the time; we both know it, and neither of us is particularly bothered by it… you know, like we would be if we were highly placed priests or something.”

This apathy toward Priesthood tenets and tradition is regularly in evidence but always feels like an oversight. There are several occasions in which Joshua, in full liturgical vestment, publicly romantically kisses his girlfriend or holds her hand. This behavior would make sense if he had shown disdain for the Church or the Priesthood at any point in the film leading to these moments. Instead, his offhanded disregard and lack of basic respect for the office he still technically holds and the organization he represents and in which he is ostensibly still a believer does nothing to help build the much-needed empathetic bridge between him and religious audiences.

Almost certainly a passion project, as the star of the film, is also one of its writers, co-directors, and producers, there are a number of moments in which it seems the filmmakers were unwilling to give up a cherished scene or set piece, eating up time that could have been better-spent character building and letting characters earn a better understanding of what was happening around them, rather than having it delivered to them and them reacting to it. A not inconsiderable amount of the film feels rushed in this way.

For instance, Alexander Siddig, best known for his roles as Prince Doran Martell in Game of Thrones and Dr. Julian Bashir in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, gives his usual understated and criminally overlooked performance, but his character, the Cardinal in charge of the convent in which the action begins, so easily shifts loyalties and tone that it’s impossible to get a deep enough read on him to connect. Audiences will likely be unsure of whether they should trust him, a common enough horror trope, but it’s not earned. Instead, the script says that it’s time for the protagonists to trust him, and it is, in fact, time to trust him.

One technical issue that hurts the film, perhaps detrimentally so, is that there are a handful of sound mixing issues in which music or background noise drowns out a number of what seem likely to be key narrative details. It’s possible that some of the issues stated above were addressed, but we missed them, and it’s not due to our sound equipment. Even the AI responsible for the closed captioning of the press screening could not discern what was being said in those moments.

Another area of contention happens to be the film’s greatest strength. Deliver Us is frightening and disturbing, as a horror movie should be, and its beats are delivered with artistry and superb timing. Unfortunately, they tend to be the same horror beats, half irrelevant to the immediate action. At the same time, a third is the same unseen stranger over-the-shoulder jump scare, once again eating up time that could be better used in story development.

While it is a relatively well-made film by the independent film standards of the last 15 years, at its core, Deliver Us is a profoundly heretical and overtly sacrilegious film that wields blasphemy like a Faustian quill pen waiting for moviegoers to sign away their souls at $15 a pop. Religious fans of horror films may want to give the imperfect but far more doctrinally sound The Pope’s Exorcist a watch instead.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• The casual and repeated blasphemy in this film is indicative of the rot that has infected our churches.
  • The premise notwithstanding, the repeated graphic nude and or sex scenes set amongst the visual elements of the Christian faith and used as metaphorical cudgels are the most egregious.
• Priests easily accept a Unitarian view of God.

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