Wormwood vs Mankind: review of Nefarious

[Riverboat]

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” - C.S. Lewis/The Screwtape Letters

 Nefarious was promoted as a horror film. If you were hoping for something lurid, save your money and go squander it on Evil Dead Rise.

 It’s like picking up The Screwtape Letters and expecting Stephen King. Most of the movie consists of the court-appointed psychiatrist interviewing a death-row inmate to determine his eligibility for capital punishment. A convicted serial killer named Edward is a shell of a man inhabited by a demon who calls himself Nefarious. Now and then Edward emerges, a stuttering dolt terrified of death but unable – unwilling, actually – to repent of his sins. So the host is really inseparable from the parasite.

 Sounds more like a chapter from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. So what, exactly, what makes this a horror film?

 Just this. Instead of showing the grisly nature of the violence man commits, the demon throws it back in our face by showing how we justify it. During one exchange, the parasite taunts James with the topic of abortion. James, it turns out, is a bit of a sloucher himself with commitment issues, and has arranged for his partner to kill their unborn child.  

 Nefarious schools the doctor: “The Creator creates, and we destroy. And we do all of it through you. We always have. Did you forget your history, Jimmy? Even in ancient times, the arch-demon Molech was celebrated by tossing infants into flaming bonfires.”

 “What does this have to do with me?” James asks.

 “Oh, nothing, James. Especially since the priests now wear surgical scrubs, the killing takes place in the womb, so there’s no screaming to be heard anyway, and the remains are tossed into a gas-fired crematorium. No, James, no, no, no. There’s no parallel whatsoever to you. Can you imagine the agony the Carpenter feels when we rip a child to pieces inside its own mother’s womb? ‘Cause that’s what we do, James. You and us. We do it together. … And all hell rejoices.”

 Earlier in the movie, I was bemused as James calls for the resident chaplain to enter. I knew James was in trouble when the priest came in wearing a ridiculous table runner that looked like something picked up at an open-air market across the Mexican border around his neck. Then he actually dismisses the notion of demonic possession. No wonder the demon liked him.

 Is it entertainment? Hardly. Is it worth watching? My wife and I haven’t stopped talking about it since we left the theater.