Deus Irae (latin for 'God of Wrath') is an Argentinian horror film written and directed by Pedro Cristiani. It deals with one of my favourite horror sub-genres, that of demonic possession. While the special effects, editing, and music choice delighted, I thought the way the film's story was set out became more distracting than intriguing.
Pablo Ragoni stars as Father Javier, a priest who specialises in exorcisms. While the church's official stance is that these possessed people are suffering mental illness, Javier has come to the secretly believe that they are literally possessed by demons from Hell. His search leads to the discovery of Father Marcos (Gaston Ricaud) and Sister Helena (Sabrina Macchi), a duo who work deep in the shadows battling demonic forces with fist and prayer. Recognising Javier's unique skill of being able to tell the names of demons (a sure-fire way to destroy them), they recruit him to their bloody and bleak crusade.
Starting off, anyone going into this movie needs to recognise it is just part one of a larger story. The film literally ends mid-flow with many plot threads left unresolved, and a title card stating 'End of Book One' or something similar. The journey to this end of a kind wasn't smooth. Deus Irae has an annoying habit of showing many of its scenes out of context, and splitting up its scenes so that they appear ended before heading back to them at a later timeframe. This made the film feel weird, and not a good weird, but an odd weird. While there was some enjoyment at slowly deciphering scenes as more clues are revealed, it gave the film a meandering circular feel with scenes believed long over suddenly appearing again with more detail added to them.
The three main characters are also a very odd bunch, and I often struggled to tell if they were on each others sides or if Marcos and Helena were actually opposed to Javier. These characters appear in a series of bizarre silent montages, with the characters showing strange facial expressions, such as when Marcos is beating a literal demon with his fists while wearing a gigantic grin on his face. These sequences looked super cool, and I loved the trip-hop style music that plays over these segments, but it doesn't alter the fact I didn't really follow what was going on, it became a bit too obtuse for its own good.
The special effects were tremendous, practical monster effects that wouldn't have looked out of place in The Thing. Spider like fleshy creatures, strange growths bursting out of victim's bodies, and lots and lots of blood. Outside of the soundtrack I would say these practical effects were the absolute highlight, as was the costume design. A long scene featuring a possessed man dressed up in a Jesus outfit was really memorable due to how good it all looked. The editing was strong, but some of the effects used to simulate a sense of strangeness were overused, particularly a loud glitch type noise that is used in conjunction with elements within the film suddenly speeding up, this appears throughout the whole eighty five minute film.
Deus Irae looks fantastic, it has lots of atmosphere, interesting characters, and the semblance of a good plot. It was just all a bit too confusing for its own good, I didn't think the scenes played out of order worked, making things needlessly complicated in an already complicated story. There are some very strong scenes here, but for me it just wasn't that satisfying a movie to watch. Deus Irae is streaming exclusively on SCREAMBOX.
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