Deliver Us from Evil (2006)
Disarming Films

Description

A broad spectrum of brave abuse survivors and Oliver O'Grady himself tell the whole truth of their stories and how their experiences affected each of them in starkly unique ways.

Since 1973 and perhaps even earlier, the church knew Oliver O'Grady was a pedophile. How could this happen? Why would the Bishops and Monsignors allow this monster to ravage the children of their Church for decades? The answer goes all the way back to the Fourth Century.

Tags

Oscar nomination

Collected reviews and ratings

10 Reel | Pam Grady

The Church remains in a state of denial to this day, making Deliver Us from Evil that much more distressing. The Catholic hierarchy may be able to look away, but anyone seeing this film will not be able to follow its lead.
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10 San Francisco Chronicle | Ruthe Stein

The spellbinding power of this almost certain Oscar nominee for best documentary comes from its chilling subject matter -- a notorious pedophile priest and the case that director Amy Berg makes for a cover-up of his heinous acts by the Roman Catholic hierarchy in California.
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10 DVD Talk | Phil Bacharach

The Oscar-nominated documentary chronicles the horrific tale of a pedophile priest and his many victims, but its scope is more expansive. By zeroing in on the specific case of defrocked Father Oliver O'Grady, the filmmakers paint a stark and frightening picture of institutional corruption and abuse of power.
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10 Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

The brilliance of Deliver Us From Evil — what makes the film a revelation and not just a rehash of headlines — is the way that Berg portrays a kind of terrifying psychological chain, linking the abuse, the obscene entitlement experienced by a man like O'Grady, and the squirmy arrogance of the Catholic authorities ...
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9.8 DVD Verdict | Neal Solon

As a documentary about power relationships, betrayal, and institutional indifference, Deliver Us From Evil clearly presents facts and evidence to support the case it is trying to make. But the film is most effective when the people in it are telling stories, regardless of whether they are supported by the facts.
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9.0 Variety | Robert Koehler

It's hard to imagine even devout Catholics coming away from the film without a sense of rage at a religion that appears to value members of the priesthood over the well-being of children.
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9.0 New York Times | A. O. Scott

Neither sensationalistic nor sentimental, Ms. Berg’s film is clear-sighted, tough-minded and devastating, a portrait of individual criminality and institutional indifference, a study in the betrayal of trust and the irresponsibility of authority.
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8.8 ReelViews | James Berardinelli

Deliver Us from Evil takes us behind the curtain of the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church in recent years and shows that the problem is not solved.
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8.3 The Onion A.V. Club | Scott Tobias

In a major coup, director Amy Berg convinced O'Grady to appear in the documentary, and his testimony reveals a man who's chillingly divorced from the full weight of his actions.
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8.0 Amazon user reviews

What makes Deliver Us From Evil crucial viewing, however, are the remarkable interviews with a few of the victims (now adults) and their parents, whose stories are wrenching and riveting. With the support of a priest seeking to reform the church, two of the victims actually go to the Pope, seeking some form of help in addressing O'Grady's crimes. This stunningly potent documentary combines raw feeling with lucid and persuasive discussions of the reasons for--and disturbing breadth of--this crisis within the Church.
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8.0 Slant Magazine | Nick Schager

Former CNN reporter Amy Berg's Deliver Us From Evil lays out the means by which the Church, through surreptitious and deceitful means, concealed (and continues to conceal) O'Grady's predilection for infiltrating stable families and molesting their kids
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8.0 Washington Post | Desson Thomson

While the movie persuasively argues that there's as much evil in the church's moral evasiveness as O'Grady's pathological behavior, it loses focus when it attempts to draw a wider conspiracy that reaches as high as the Vatican.
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