New Movie Review: 'Nefarious'
The Devil Meets the Therapeutic Age
Early in Nefarious a priest visits Edward Wayne Brady, the condemned killer on death row. Father Lou hears from the attending psychiatrist that Brady believes he’s a demon and says, “Sadly, movies and TV have filled our heads with images largely metaphorical, not to be taken literally…”
Soon afterwards, the priest responds to the prisoner’s tirade against the “Carpenter,” saying he’s there to help him in his last hours, adding, “Many of the things that bother us are just our fears, unordered thoughts.”
“You don’t believe in demonic possession?” Brady says, stunned by the priest’s words and pleased. “I was wrong about you. I should’ve had you come and visit sooner.”
Nefarious now understands that there’s little chance in this age of having to deal with a tough audience of believers and priests-of-old coming after him with a crucifix and a vision-burning chant praising the “Carpenter.”
We’ve come a long way since Christopher’s Marlowe’s 16th Century play Doctor Faustus, where a scholar with great ambition makes a deal with the devil for even greater earthly rewards. When the demon in Nefarious lets the condemned man surface, we witness a sniveling, stuttering prisoner, terrified of his approaching execution and unable to take responsibility for the killings. It’s the old saw “the devil made me do it.”
Brady has stumbled into a life of murder and has lost his soul. Faustus, full of passion and bravado, eyes open, takes the plunge, signs his name in his own blood and sells his soul.
The demon in the one hour and thirty-eight-minute movie shares little with Christopher Marlowe’s melancholy devil Mephistopheles, who tells Faustus to turn his back on godlike knowledge and the road to perdition. Mephistopheles almost seems to endure his eternal punishment by remembrance of his expulsion -- God’s last words to the fallen angels and that last glimpse of the Almighty.
The demon Nefarious lacks the eternal sadness of losing heaven and relishes hurting the “Carpenter” of Nazareth by befouling his creation. This is a modern-day devil, clever and cruel, the devil of the Bataan Death March, gulags, concentration camps, and serial killers.
Perhaps the start of godless totalitarianism in the early 20th Century pleases the devil like no other run of horror in human history. And perhaps the devil has evolved with the times, becoming supremely evil, and supremely empty, like his catch.