Practical effects-driven exorcism film Deus Irae possesses SCREAMBOX exclusively on December 10. The Argentinian effort follows a priest who must question how much of his own humanity he’s willing to sacrifice in order to defeat evil.

The last times I caught an Argentinian horror film (or any kind of Argentinian film, really) were Demian Rugna’s Terrified and When Evil Lurks. I was, admittedly, a lot less caught up in the hype over When Evil Lurks than many were, but I did still enjoy it. And I also liked Terrified, so I was excited to see another Argentinian horror production come down the pike from Screambox.

Pedro Cristiani’s Deus Irae is that production! It is a non-sequentially told story of Father Javier, an exorcist for the church who finds himself caught up in something larger and more malicious than he could ever have comprehended. He himself is full of sin and vice, and when he is brought in by two other exorcists to face off against evil forces, he will have to confront everything about himself in order to confront the demonic forces at play.

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ The movie is gruesome with practical effects, and it does a great job committing to using those kinds of effects and doing a great job with them. There are some really impressive effects throughout the movie, including one scene where a man’s skeleton crawls, spider-like, out of his body, and another scene where a character is holding an insect-like human heart.

It’s a staggering commitment to the practical side of effects work, and they are actually well done, which is great to see. I’m relatively sure there is some CGI in play for at least one scene (where an army of flies swarms the head of Javier), but I could be wrong about that. And even if I’m not, it’d forgivable out of necessity.

+ The mood is very dark and depressing, and it is unrelenting. There’s no joy to be found here, though it would be wildly out of place if any was. Deus Irae trades on hopelessness and mentally (and emotionally) disarming its viewer.

The pallet of the film is very dark and very red. It constantly evokes feelings of dread and malice. Visually, everything possible is done to ensure the movie is burrowing itself inside of you, as the themes of it all suggest. It can really creep into your psyche and take hold of you.

– The story is all over the place, literally. It leaps around in time and space, and it’s near impossible to follow. Some scenes are repeated. Some time jumps occur mid-moment. I had an incredibly hard time following where the characters were or when things were happening in context to other things we had seen. It’s all very confusing.

Beyond being about a priest/exorcist being taken in by two others, I have no idea what the arc is supposed to be. There are demons that need to be fought, but there’s also a demon strapped up and used by the priests for confession, which I did not really get. And characters are on the verge of death and then come back, and then we get new scenes with them, and I was never sure if that was Before or After their near-death.

I struggled like hell to follow along with this movie’s storytelling. It doesn’t really give many clues as it goes, either. It’s just a mess.

– It’s hard to judge the acting because I don’t speak Spanish, but it seemed almost goofy at times here. It didn’t always come across as sincere to the film’s mood. The characters just felt… off at moments, I suppose.

There is also a shtick repeated quite often of high-speed twitching/reacting, and to use it once or twice is fine to create discomfort in the viewer, but the characters do it frequently, and I was taken out of the film by it eventually.

OVERALL

I had far too hard of a time following along with Deus Irae’s maddeningly incoherent storytelling convention, and that made it almost impossible for me to retain any interest in what I was watching. Maybe this one was just too clever or smart for me, but it didn’t even hold my attention as it was flopping around in time. It just felt like it was being intentionally confusing and hoping the viewer would watch it again to try to put together the pieces, but I had little interest in doing as such after just one watch. The effects are nice, sure, and credit to Cristiani for his big swings in storytelling, but it was too jumbled for me.