The newly released movie, Nefarious, is a supernatural thriller that exposes Satan’s strategies in shocking detail and is being hailed by exorcists as “the best movie portraying demonic possession ever produced.”
The film was created by Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman who are best known for their award-winning film, Unplanned. Based on the best-selling book, A Nefarious Plot by Steve Deace, it pits a possessed death-row inmate named Edward Wayne Brady (Sean Patrick Flanery) against an atheist psychiatrist named Dr. James Martin (Jordan Belfi).
Hired to affirm Brady’s sanity before his pending execution, Dr. Martin is warned about Brady being a “master manipulator” whose former psychiatrist committed suicide, but Martin is unmoved, at least in the beginning.
Brady lets Martin know right from that start that he’s not afraid of being executed. Why not? “Because I can’t die,” Brady says. “You see James, I’m a demon. … [Edward is] merely my host body, which I inhabit.” The name of the demon who inhabits. him, and does most of the talking in the movie, is Nefarious.
Of course, the doctor doesn’t buy any of it, even when Nefarious makes the astonishing, and eventually proven, claim that “Before you leave here today, you will have committed three murders.”
The doctor merely passes off Brady’s behavior as dissociative identity disorder.
As Plugged In reviewer Adam R. Holz describes, the doctor brags about how mankind has evolved past religious dogma to a more enlightened, progressive understanding of reality.
Actors Sean Patrick Flanery (L) as Edward Wayne Brady, aka Nefarious, and Jordan Belfi as Dr. James Martin (Courtesy Photos -Believe Entertainment)"We’ve never been freer,” Martin tells Brady. “Literacy is at an all-time high. We’re working to eliminate racism, intolerance, gender inequality. People can love whom the want, be who they want, do what they want. Diversity is no longer a dream. Hate speech is no longer tolerated. And politically, we’re reclaiming the moral high ground.”
Nefarious scoffs at this notion of “freedom” and says the world has never had as many slaves as it does today. “Forty-eight million slaves—half of them sex slaves," he says. "Hate speech? The irony is we didn’t even come up with that one. You did it all by yourself. Sometimes you amaze even us. Now there’s evil everywhere, and no one even cares.”
When the doctor disagrees, Nefarious says this only proves that the demons have achieved their goal.
"Slowly. With your movies, your TV, and your media. We desensitized you, redirected your worldview," the devil says. "To the point that you can’t recognize evil when it’s right in front of your face. More to the point, James, you can’t even feel it when you’re doing it. As for winners and losers... that gets decided at the time of death. The exact numbers are a closely guarded secret, but there are more of you ending up in my master’s house than with the Enemy. A lot more, Jimmy.”
Throughout most of the movie, with Nefarious usually in control of the conversation, Holz says there's a lot of discussion about "the reality of God, demons, the devil, heaven, hell, judgment, damnation, free will and the ways that demons manipulate humanity to accomplish their primary purpose: smearing and marring, mutilating and destroying those created in God’s image.”
But it’s not done in a preachy way. This movie is more like a gut-wrenching supernatural thriller than what one would expect from a Christian film, which is exactly what the creators intended.
“What we need to realize is that [people] today are doing Ouija boards, tarot cards, Reiki, yoga, getting pagan tattoos. All these are ways that people are getting infested. If you play with the devil, he will come,” said co-creator and director Cary Solomon to the National Catholic Register. “All the world [is] surrounded by the occult, especially on TV and in the movie theaters. So it’s a perfect time for this to show the wickedness and the evil of the devil."
Essentially, what the movie is saying is, “Don’t play with the devil," Solomon continued. "If you dance with the devil, you’re going to lose. We point that out, but we do it in a very smart, cinematic way — we tell a story. Jesus told parables for a reason because stories are the most powerful way to convey information to people.”
Even the eerie poster for the movie was created in a way to attract people who are drawn to the occult. But they won't find the typical Hollywood style horror movie in this film. There is no sex, no bad language, no blasphemy or heresy. Instead of tearing down the Church, "We do the opposite," Solomon said. "We’re glorifying God, glorifying everything that is good and right and righteous in this movie, but we’re doing it in a very smart way. It’s a totally different kind of movie. No one is walking up the side of the walls … and doing foul, wretched things. Everything about this movie is Catholic.”
This could explain why there were so many problems on the set during the making of the film. First, the whole crew caught COVID and they had to start over. There were eight car accidents in a matter of 12 days, thankfully with no injuries, but all the cars were totalled. During a rainstorm in Burbank, California, the roof was ripped off their office building, something that never happens in a rainstorm. Even worse, the on-set priest, who was a trained exorcist, required an emergency appendectomy during the filming and his appendix burst during the procedures. The doctor said if he had showed up an hour later, he would have died.
The devil was obviously not pleased with the message being conveyed in this movie, which is why Father Carlos Martins, an exorcist recognized by the Vatican, called this film “the best movie portraying demonic possession ever produced.”
Rather than getting bogged down like every other movie in diabolical phenomena such as levitation, extraordinary strength, and the “same old signs”, this one brings the viewer into the demonic mind.
“While the movie trend has focused on displaying demonic rage, Nefarious deftly exhibits the devil’s insatiable craving and formidable intelligence. Far less concerned with ostentation than demonstrating the devil’s thought and intellectual character, the movie accurately depicts how he smothers his victim’s hope," Father Martins said.
He confirmed the movie’s accuracy and applauded the “astute, careful and intelligent thinking” that went into the writing of this film, which some are comparing to the brilliance of C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters.
It's not surprising that movie critics panned the film with the usual anti-Christian tripe, giving it a dismal 30 on the Tomatometer at Rotten Tomatoes.
For example, Roger Moore of Movie Nation said, “The only thing not covered in this Christo-fascist manifesto of a movie is “'guns'.”
Richard Propes at theindependentcritic.com said that while there are moments of intensity in Nefarious, “there isn't a moment in the film that feels like cinematic horror unless you're talking about one of those evangelical haunted houses where demons pop out of the walls to warn of the evils of the world.”
Movie-goers, however, gave it a whopping 97% with comments such as Sharon M. who wrote, “Very thought provoking movie. Hit the nail on the head with what is going on in society today! Great acting, would highly recommend seeing it.” SH thought the “theology is spot on” and Mark called it “an intense film that really makes you think.”
The only word of warning about the movie is the R rating which is due to an extremely graphic scene when Brady is executed by electrocution.
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