Hot trailers

Hot trailers

Deliver Us From Evil

https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=F1KY_pMBVXQ

I thought this was a cop thriller since the credits say it's a Jerry Bruckheimer production and Eric Bana (right, Munich, 2005) seems very gritty, like he's going to knock heads with Denzel Washington in Training Day 2. Plus, you also get Edgar Ramirez (Zero Dark Thirty, 2012) looking like a drug dealer.

Then Ramirez - he's actually some sort of hippie-priest - warns about different kinds of evil.

Okay, forget about filing a standard report, dude. "I've seen some horrible things; nothing that can't be explained by human nature," Bana counters.

Well, there's always a first non-human time, right?

Cue in ominous horror-movie music and before you know it, this clip segues into a mini- Paranormal Activity sequence about what happens when you leave your little daughter sleeping alone in a creepy, darkened bedroom.

I kept shouting "Turn on the lights, Bana", but nobody listened to me.

It's Cop versus Demon since this deal, based on an actual NYPD cop, is helmed by Scott Derrickson, director of 2012's Sinister, a scary chiller starring Ethan Hawke which I still blame for my white hair. This time, I'm a little better prepared and a lot braver simply because it's Eric Bana who's spooked. He's tougher than Hawke, more pumped, and he's a cop with a gun. Please, please tell me ghosts can get arrested too.

Devil's Knot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC- NclGLwvI

Reese Witherspoon, playing a blue-collar mum in Arkansas, loses her son - he's among three boys who were found murdered in the woods - and Colin Firth (both right) comes to the rescue.

Sorry, I'm simplifying it since this is a very serious drama based on a true incident in 1993, but I get very excited when I see one Oscar winner meeting another Oscar winner. I'm very easily star-struck, you see, especially when American country girl meets English dandy man.

And since this trailer is from Atom Egoyan, the acclaimed French Egyptian director of The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and Ararat (2002), my interest level shoots up like Firth's classiness. Alas, the chap isn't playing a Brit gent. He's a busybody private investigator who stirs trouble in the parochial, religious community when he thinks three teens from a so-called Satanic cult arrested for the murders are innocent.

It's the sort of small town where your pig might get strung up if you think the wrong way. This is the kind of airless, claustrophobic Southern murder mystery which only true detectives from TV's True Detective can unravel.

But I like the idea of Firth digging solo while Witherspoon goes from grieving angrily to thinking more rationally.

"You're supposed to be a grieving mother, start behaving like one," her redneck hubby (Alessandro Nivola) scolds her.

Sorry, boy. That curious Southern accent of country-boy Colin can just about charm anybody.


Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.

This website is best viewed using the latest versions of web browsers.