Nefarious (2023)

Directed by Chuck Konzelman & Cary Solomon. Starring Jordan Belfi, Sean Patrick Flanery, Tom Ohmer, Daniel Martin Berkey. [R]

Psychiatrist Belfi is assigned to evaluate death row inmate Edward Brady (Flanery) to determine his sanity prior to his execution, and during the interview, the convicted serial killer claims to be the vessel for a demon called Nefarious. Belfi isn’t convinced, believing Flanery to be faking it in order to be declared insane and, therefore, unfit for the electric chair, but Brady/Nefarious insists that he/it wants to die, and sets about manipulating the doc into signing off on the execution. Dry, dumb, and deeply-confused psychological horror movie fails as a piece of cinema—about 80% of the running time is just two men talking to each other, and even if the dialogue they’re forced to deliver wasn’t so consistently unimaginative and obvious, Belfi has no vitality or nuance and Flanery pushes his showy mannerisms over the top as if they’re the only capped weapons in his morose arsenal. More than that, however, it fails as misguided tract, since the message is clearly trying to push conservative values by arguing that euthanasia and abortion are forms of murder, but since the argument comes from a deceitful and homicidal demon, shouldn’t we take his words (and supposed virtues) as lies? There’s also an inadvertent argument against the death penalty because Brady is an innocent patsy about to lose his life because that demon decided to butcher a dozen or so people while wearing his earthly form like a coat, so…is this secretly an outspoken liberal movie? Writers/directors Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon’s body of work, the source material coming from an outspoken COVID-19 conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter, and Glenn Beck appearing as himself in a cameo all pretty much guarantee otherwise, with contradictions being purely accidental; since the movie is so monotonous and mind-numbing either way, why bother arguing?

10/100