It took me three sittings to get through Nefarious, the Christian horror film recently released by Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon, starring Sean Patrick Flanery and Jordan Belfi. I was curious about this artistic endeavor both as someone who appreciates the power of story and as someone who grew up around demonization. If you’ve heard me rant about church people attacking Christian creatives, you’ll know my motive here is exhortation: I support their making of the film, I’m glad it’s out there, and I hope they continue to make films. I’m taking a moment to review it for three reasons: 1) to bring awareness for anyone who may wish to see a more accurate demonic possession portrayed on screen than is usually seen in Hollywood, 2) to support the continued creative endeavors of men and women of faith, and 3) to critique the creative endeavors of men and women of faith, so that we might improve at our crafts. (I know, I know – I haven’t published yet so “our crafts” sounds presumptuous, but I’m working on it!)
While it’s clearly evangelistic in nature, this is not an Inspirational film, and therefore lacks the redemptive arc we’ve come to expect from Christian filmmakers. This doesn’t bother me, because the film genre is closer to a tragedy. Is Psycho-Paranormal Tragedy an unlikely genre for Christian filmmakers? Yes. Is it off limits? No. Having said that, the demonized lead character is shown in such a state of cruel suffering, I truly couldn’t watch. I paused, took a break for a couple days, tried again, hit a point where I had to stop, then got through the final stretch while looking away from the screen for about ten minutes. This is one of those “feature not bug” deals: they intended to disturb the audience and they succeeded. (Some folks are so numbed out or familiar with darkness, they feel a kind of pull towards such content—I was like that when I was younger and would have watched Nefarious because of the pull.) The demon itself was very loquacious and I can see why the film was compared to The Screwtape Letters. The demon said some accurate things, though perhaps it was a bit much to have him use the official terminology of the Catholic church to describe the stages of demonization. To my knowledge demons have not adopted the official doctrine of Catholicism, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know it. (They do use scripture, by the way.) Looking from within the story, I don’t think that bit of dialogue served the motives of the demon, and therefore they were some of the least believable lines in the script. That’s a note for us creatives: A script sounds preachy the moment the lines coming from a character’s mouth don’t serve a purpose for the character but do line up with the ideology of the writer.
The demon’s reaction to the Catholic priest was also a bit too on the nose. It might have been the only part of the film I didn’t find to be terribly accurate, aside from the demon spilling its secrets a la James Bond villain. For the sake of anyone reading who may try to cast out a demon one day, let me just say this: My experience of demons of the kind depicted in the film is that they don’t cower that easily, and certainly the wardrobe on a priest isn’t going to make them cower – a real demon, especially high ranking, would have smelled the lukewarmness of that priest a million miles away and would not have leapt into the corner screaming in fear. It would have played along, and created lowkey distractions to make sure the gospel wasn’t preached to the human host it inhabited, probably it would have pretended to be “Edward” for a bit and talked about his feelings, or presented a confused dissociated child part of the host which would have caused more chaos. (It’s possible the filmmakers sincerely believe the authority rests on the office of a minister and not on the strength of their relationship with the Lord, but the seven sons of Sceva could have informed them. [Acts 19:13-16]) The name of Jesus from a person of sincere faith may make a demon that agitated, but a priestly uniform will not scare them. What I did like about that scene is the cautionary tale it provided to priests and pastors who might not take demonic possession seriously, by showing them the price victims of demonization pay for their lack of knowledge.
Overall, it is the kind of film that takes a certain kind of grit to sit through. If I’d been drawn into the characters’ humanity earlier on, I probably would have been unable to turn away, so this might be a missed opportunity from a writers’ standpoint (more backstory on either character may have helped). It is far less church-friendly than a lot of films, but at the same time I’m not sure it was instructive enough for someone outside the church to benefit from the wisdom of the creative team that produced it. If it had been based on a true story, I’d have seen it as a compelling and necessary exposure of the spiritual war plaguing humanity. Because it was fiction, and probably geared towards evangelistic purposes, I wish they’d been even more committed to certain aspects of the story. For instance, I wish they’d made opportunity to show the atheist rejecting the gospel outright, which was implied in the script but never clearly stated. This means that Christians in the audience understand why he was haunted by the demon later, but the unchurched may not know—almost like a humourless inside joke. My concern is the unchurched will learn that some priests can’t help them, but they won’t learn quite enough about the Jesus who can. Since the film already preached (through some of the slightly incongruent dialogue between the demon and the psychologist), it left me questioning why they didn’t flesh it out and just “go there.” It left me feeling like the writers underestimated the sophistication of the audience. Everyone already knows it’s written by Christians, and if they didn’t know going into it they’d smell it soon enough because of the demon’s theological monologues. Therefore, letting the atheist reject Christ outright and showing the consequences would have been reasonable and respectful.
This leads me to my last point. Who is the intended audience for this film? While it might be intended for evangelism, I suspect the more likely audiences are clergy, pastors, or any Christian who either does not believe in demonic possession or does but refuses to help set people free. The film leaves the brunt of the responsibility not on the demonized convict or on the smug psychologist, but on us. This might have been subconscious on the part of the filmmakers but it’s very telling: they clearly indict us on charges of not setting the captives free. Then, perhaps ironically, in the process of their cinematic indictment they fail to present the gospel that sets the captives free. I think this is okay—if we are their intended audience. Again, just like in a good script it all comes down to motive. If disturbing the Church out of her apathy was their goal, the film achieves it, but might be too dark to cast a wide net over the body of Christ: their intended audience simply can’t tolerate the content. However, if disturbing and evangelizing the lost was their goal, the film was disturbing but perhaps not coherent enough to offer redemption.
I think they did an excellent job. Everything about the film was legitimate in terms of quality: the acting, soundtrack, the cinematography, the set design, wardrobe, the writing and editing. It just feels a bit like they went to take a swing, then pulled their punch at the last minute, perhaps confident that the body of Christ would take the reins and pick up the task of evangelism where they left off. Maybe this exposes some cynicism in me, but I wish they hadn’t. The film is sure to stir up conversation and impact many, and I encourage people with the stomach for dark films to watch it. At the same time, I think they could have had even more impact. Whoever was their intended audience and whichever goal was their primary goal, I’d strongly encourage them to go for it full force next time.
dustymaytaylor.com 