Scott Derrickson is the writer and director of the new movie, Deliver Us From Evil. He was also the man behind for Sinister , The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. He believes fear strips away the lies we usually tell ourselves and forces us to face reality. He sat down with Steven Greydanus to talk about his style and the new movie.
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That part where he’s talking about waking up at 3am on the nose is familiar to me. If you delve into the dark too fast and too much, there’s a very oppressive atmosphere that follows you around.
I also had the same problem when reading through “The Screwtape Letters” too fast. I then understood why Lewis said he couldn’t write more of them than he ended up writing. It’s not a very pleasant experience or place to be.
I feel as if I’m sensitive to these kind of things, but I didn’t have any trouble with The Screwtape Letters. I’m having trouble right now with Derrickson’s movie, Sinister. I watched the trailer and read the story synopsis for it this morning. I don’t know why I look at horrible stuff like that. It scares me.
In other news, Scott Derrickson has been asked to direct a movie about Marvel’s Doctor Strange, which this article says may mean the movie will be pretty scary.
I went to see The Exorcism of Emily Rose years ago and I have to ask if anyone knows if people became real, regenerate Christians because of that film. All I remember of it was thinking “this is scary,” and “this is Roman Catholic.” My impression then was that he wanted to make people believers by scaring them with demon possession. I read something that John McArthur wrote years ago in which he explained that in working with cases of people complaining of demonic activity that he did all the recommended things you do–casting demons out in Jesus’s name and so forth–and nothing helped. What he found was that the real problem was *sin*. It was when he gave people the Gospel and people repented their sin and turned to Jesus that real relief from demonic activity was experienced. But that isn’t cinematic.
I started watching the interview with Derrickson, and I’ll finish it, but I wanted to comment on his work based on Emily Rose. I’m interested to see if his vision/goals have changed and what he’s trying to accomplish with this.
Thanks for sharing, Tracey. I’ll see that was not his intent at all and he isn’t Roman Catholic per se. He attends a Presbyterian (USA) church in L.A., which may be a pretty good church over all. I’ve heard of other good PCUSA church, despite all the bad theology in the denomination as a whole. He also gives a rundown of his perspective on protestant vs. R. Catholic views of exorcism.
What MacArthur said is interesting. I heard a man speak at a conference say he has helped many people in Minneapolis (I think) gain a measure of freedom from demonic oppression or possession, but when he tried to follow-up with the gospel, they often didn’t want to hear it. He said sometimes they came back with the same problems they had before. I took what he said at face value, but I will say he was a divisive guy. He appeared to be someone who had faced a lot of opposition from supposed friends, so when he talked, it often sounded confrontational.