Review – Deliver Us from Evil

And the trend continues. Once again a director takes a potentially fascinating story and turns it into a mess of a documentary. The story of clergy sexual abuse of children needs to be told. And here we’ve got some good story-tellers: a serial abuser and a handful of his now-adult victims (and their families). However, the thrust of the production swiftly turns from how the abuse could have been allowed to take place to begin with to how the Roman Catholic Church failed to deal effectively with the situation. Even that might have been okay; official church complicity is a serious part of the problem. But alas, the potential impact of this movie is undone by the almost complete lack of story-telling. Interviews are cut together in an almost random sequence, with little attention to chronology or other organizational scheme that might allow the audience to absorb what we’re being given. Then at the end it goes completely Michael Moore when a couple of the victims try to get into the Vatican to present a letter about their plight. Apparently we’re supposed to take something away from the fact that the security guards wouldn’t let them in. That kind of thing might be good for a few laughs in a different context, but here it makes a disappointing ending to a disorganized tale that really deserved a better break. Mildly amusing