Movie Review: ‘Deliver Us’

NEW YORK (OSV News) — A blast furnace of blasphemy, “Deliver Us” (Magnet), also is an amalgam of gore and nudity. Co-director (with Cru Ennis) Lee Roy Kunz — who co-wrote the screenplay with Kane Kunz and also takes the film’s leading role — seems intent on giving us religiously themed horror with sexy elements and the power to shock.

Kunz plays the theoretically heroic Father Fox, a sometime exorcist who blithely flouts celibacy with the help of his girlfriend, Laura (Juane Kimmel). But the focus is initially on another character.

In a gloomy and isolated Russian convent, Sister Yulia (Maria Vera Ratti), known among the other nuns for her love of beauty, becomes spontaneously pregnant while praying in front of a statue of the Blessed Virgin. She is bearing twin boys: One is the next Messiah, the other the Antichrist.

We are shown ancient prophecies from Zoroastrian magi, whose writings were passed down through the generations via elaborate tattoos. This proves an adequate method until the last batch of them is beheaded and skinned as the movie opens. Their hides are eventually the subject of scholarship among practitioners of the dark arts.

Before the delivery, Father Fox is summoned. He tells his superiors, “To be a good Christian, I’ve been a bad priest.”

On arrival at the convent, Father Fox discovers the existence of Vox Dei, a secret society that’s planning to murder Sister Yulia and the twins. Abortion is briefly discussed as an alternative. But this offends higher-up Cardinal Russo (Alexander Siddig), who observes, with loopy acuteness, “You cannot kill the Christ child.”

So, before Sister Yulia gives birth on a train, the prelate and priest get her out of there to a dacha owned by Laura. Laura, whose grandfather was a priest, has her own connections to long-ago clerical depravity.

From this point on, Kunz et al. follow the conventions of the genre, killing off characters in a variety of gruesome ways as Vox Dei members lurk. Characters have bad dreams or sexual fantasies, and both convent corridors and the woods surrounding the dacha are shrouded in perpetual darkness.

As for the demon infant, he mostly inflicts splitting headaches. Given the splatter factor of “Deliver Us” — and the wanton sacrilege in which it wallows — such ailments may not be confined to those on screen.

The film contains desecration, occult themes, pervasive bloody violence, graphic sexual activity with full nudity and fleeting rough language. The OSV News classification is O — morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

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