They could only screw up with a sequel.

Nefarious is one of those films I feel really should have been a one and done, however the movie was enough of a success despite critics hating it and mostly ignoring its existence (33% of 21 reviews) while audiences overwhelmingly loved it (96%) enough that the studio decided it’s going to become a media franchise. A sequel film and TV series are underway with the main cast ready to return, with the only question being who is going to distribute the TV show. The film released in April 2023 to a $5.4 million box office return and presumably also made a fat check from streaming as it is available on Prime Video and is also free on Tubi.

Duo directed and written by two men; Chuck Konzelman and the appropriately named Cary Solomon who true to his name split the roles in half. Both men you may recognize from their writing credits in a little known trilogy called God’s Not Dead. In retrospect and in light of this information, the cameo appearance from Glenn Beck as Glenn Beck makes a lot of sense. Also the movie is based on the book by Steve Deace, a host on Blaze Media. I also understand why critics like the people riding Roger Ebert’s dead coattails didn’t even watch the movie.

I know this is a real Christian movie about the devil because a fair number of top critic reviews are in Spanish.

Jordan Belfi plays Dr. James Martin, a criminal psychiatrist who gets brought on last minute to evaluate a serial killer in order to clear him as fit to stand execution. You may recognize Belfi as that guy who played a character in one episode of a show you watched. The serial killer? You guessed it, Frank Stallone. Actually it’s Sean Patrick Flanery who plays Edward Wayne Brady aka Nefarious. Flanery you will recognize as Connor from The Boondock Saints or we’re going to have problems going forward with this review.

There are other people in this movie but who cares, they don’t matter. Let’s focus on the positives; Flanery’s acting is fantastic. Both Flanery and Belfi had a hard job in this movie because well over half of it is the two of them alone in one room talking. And while you’d think it’d be boring, they do a great job of keeping the conversation going and the tension high through sheer emotion and body language. You see Brady is trying to convince Dr. Martin that he is possessed by a demon named Nefarious, and Flanery does a pretty great job of selling himself as a persuasive, menacing, not entirely human being, while also dipping on a dime back into his Edward character, a man being put to death for crimes he believes he didn’t commit on his own volition and for cosmic punishment.

This is a Christian film so of course Dr. Martin’s job is to be an atheist who finds his beliefs shaken by the growing evidence that he is in fact speaking with a demonic entity possessing a human being. A lot of the conversation is Dr. Martin asking Brady about how the whole Hell process works, digging him to find a thread to follow and prove his insanity, and there’s a whole lot of theology lessons about demons, Heaven, and the war between the two as well as the creation of humanity. Brady explains to Dr. Martin that he was specifically chosen for this task and before the night is over he will commit three murders. It’s not an option or a request, it will happen.

The acting is not subtle, nor is the messaging like when Brady talks about how abortion is a construct of Hell to continue the ritualistic sacrifices of infants in a way modern society would ignorantly think was a good thing. If this doesn’t tell you why film critics hated the movie, I don’t know what will. But it is interesting. And it’s occasionally hilarious, like when Brady also notes that hate speech was the sole creation of humanity and Hell had nothing to do with it. Listen, the devil may want to destroy God and burn Heaven to the ground in an act of rebellion, but even he wouldn’t drop a hard R slur on an Xbox Live Call of Duty lobby.

If you told me this movie was written and directed by the God’s Not Dead people I wouldn’t believe you. It’s definitely not a Pure Flix movie because it doesn’t exist to pander to evangelical types who masturbate over their narcissistic persecution complex.

Dr. Martin is an atheist but he’s not the kind of atheist, ironically, that would appear in prior movies by literally the same two writers. Being an atheist isn’t his personality, we don’t get the backstory about why he’s an atheist, and the film doesn’t portray non-believers as selfish one-dimensional assholes. It would have been too easy to have him be ready from the start to sign off on Brady’s execution because his non-believing status makes him morality-deprived and therefore a perfect tool for the devil, but he actually spends a good amount of the movie wanting to find a reason to declare Brady as sane.

Now on to the negatives. This movie has horrible false-advertising. Rewatching the trailer to grab screenshots I realized how heavily scenes are edited with video and audio spliced together from completely different contexts and chapters to paint a completely different narrative. You might think this was a film where Edward Brady slowly proves his demonic powers through paranormal events and spectacle, and none of that happens. Nefarious is billed as a horror movie and it is absolutely not.

It’s not The Conjuring. Incidentally the film goes out of its way to keep the truth cloudy for the most part. Is Edward Brady possessed by a demon or is he just a really cunning serial killer with strange connections inside and outside the prison? Are the few strange events we see actually the result of higher beings or is it just a combination of stress-induced panic, coincidence, and planning? The warden literally refers to Brady as a master manipulator who has driven at least one person to suicide with his demon cosplay.

Should you watch Nefarious? I think so. It sure is a cut above everything else the directors have done in their careers. I still think Solomon and Konzelmon are reprehensible assholes for writing the God’s Not Dead movies, but if this film is a sign of a future where the two leave behind the mean-spirited victim complex bullshit of Pureflix, I’m willing to give them another shot. It is free on Tubi after all.

Rating: B+