I’m no expert on religious horror films, so it’s hard for me to gauge if there’s been a recent resurgence or there’s just a consistent stream of them. Either way, Lee Roy Kunz & Cru Ennis’s Deliver Us comes out in a relatively crowded market, though with recent blockbusters like The Nun 2 and Exorcist: Believer generating more ire than fervour, it offers a gleam of hope that there’s still life in the genre.
It starts unpromisingly with a brutal bloody opening of seeming human sacrifice and the tormenting of Sister Yulia as she wanders around a Russian convent. These events become subject to an investigation by Father Fox who discovers Yulia is expecting twins in an immaculate conception that has resulted in one of them being the Antichrist. With sinister Father Saul lurking around ominously and mysterious noises wherever Father Fox goes, the film throws every cliché you’d expect from a “creepy convent” movie.
They are well executed though, with a dread inducing atmosphere like a trap is slowly ensnaring the visiting Father. But just as it feels like we’ve already run out of overused cliches to resurrect, the characters escape the convent and there is a distinct shift in tone. The dread remains but it is more muted and existential as Fox and Yulia are effectively on the run with a ticking timebomb. Questions are raised about the morality of killing a baby who may be the Antichrist and whether such suspicions are paranoia or real.
In the end, its ordinariness makes it a horror film that needs more faith in itself.
While admirable in shifting into a more ambiguous story rooted in character psychology, the film fails to create the tension needed for such a shift. For one thing, its shift from one type of horror to another is back-to-front; you can’t give us fleeting shots of cult sacrifices and hints of devilish conspiracies and then try to suggest that it may not be real. Its opening act sets the film up as an “Antichrist is coming” movie and dropping unsubtle hints early on undermines the tension it tries to build afterwards.
Indulging in familiar genre tropes so early on also means that there is less time to provide depth to the characters. We know Father Fox wants to be a Father and is a devout Christian but a reluctant priest, but this scant description isn’t enough when the rest of the film focuses on him wrestling with an existential horror. Similarly, Yulia’s belief that her unborn children “think they know better” than God and are telling her what to do restricts her character to a one-note maternal figure doing what she believes is right.
The result is a competently made film with an effectively muted colour palette, some nice editing and a good eye for unnerving imagery but ultimately drags and makes the cardinal sin of taking itself too seriously. Compared to the hysteria of Ken Russell’s The Devils or last year’s brutal hit When Evil Lurks, the heaviness of its themes bog down its tone into a monotone dullness that occasionally distracts but lacks imagination on what to do with its premise. In the end, its ordinariness makes it a horror film that needs more faith in itself.
Deliver Us is now available to watch on Digital Platforms via Altitude Films
