“You believe that God is one. Good! Even the demons believe—and they shudder.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Today is Halloween. It’s the night when ghosts and ghouls come out to play. The macabre takes over and everyone feels just a bit freer to lean into mischief and mayhem than away from it like normal. Evil is stronger than it is on other days of the year. Those who belong to Jesus need to lean extra hard into prayer and righteousness to stand against this rising tide in order that the world isn’t wiped away by it; in order that the judgment of God doesn’t come to bear on us all. And do you know what the worst part of all is? Too many people believe that kind of nonsense. Don’t get me wrong: I very much believe that evil is real, but this kind of pop cultural understanding of evil I do not. C.S. Lewis mockingly observed it is a ploy of the Devil to keep us unwittingly immersed in real evil, blissfully unaware that it is slowly poisoning our souls, all the way back in the 1940s in his classic, The Screwtape Letters. Evil does exist, but it doesn’t often look like we might expect. The horror genre was classically a way for us to explore evil through the fairly nonthreatening vehicle of a story. Today it is more often little more than an excuse for lazy filmmakers to splash lots of guts and gore and nudity on the screen. A fairly recent entry into the genre, though, leans back into its roots in really powerful ways. Let’s talk for just a few minutes about Nefarious.

Nefarious isn’t your typical horror film. For starters, there’s no bad language, no nudity, no blood, no gore, and there really aren’t even any jump scares. That much alone might leave you wondering exactly how it even qualified for entry into the genre in the first place. Well, the climax moment near the end features a scene in which a man is executed using the electric chair. That was pretty hard to watch. Also, about 90% of the movie involves a psychiatrist having a conversation with a demon in possession of that very death row inmate.

The movie is based on the book, A Nefarious Plot, by author, Steve Deace. He wrote it as a kind of modern successor of The Screwtape Letters. It’s about a sinister plot by a particular demon to plunge the United States into chaos. I haven’t read the book. In fact, prior to a podcast episode I listened to this past weekend, I had never heard of the movie either. After the interview, I discovered the movie is currently available on Amazon Prime Video (which—let’s be honest—probably means you can watch it), and gave it a watch. My immediate reaction is that you should too.

The movie is a low budget affair, but the actor they found to play the inmate, Edward Wayne Brady, does a masterful job. Sean Patrick Flanery absolutely nails the personality of the demon, Nefarious, short for Nefariamus, and the back and forth between when the demon has control of Brady and when Brady himself does. The other actors do a pretty solid job, but Flanery steals the show. The movie wouldn’t have been nearly as good without him in that role.

The basic premise of the plot is that Brady, a convicted serial killer, is set to be executed, but in order to satisfy a court-ordered stay from the last time the State of Oklahoma had tried to have him executed, he needs to have a psychiatric exam that finds him to be sane and competent to face punishment for his crimes. The film opens, however, with the psychiatrist who was set to declare him criminally insane and unfit for execution committing suicide. As a result, the state appoints a young doctor who is fairly new to the profession, Dr. James Martin, to do the job.

Almost as soon as the two men sit down for the pivotal interview, Nefarious reveals himself to James as a demon who is in possession of Brady. (Because the doctor refuses to refer to him as Dark Lord, Nefarious refuses to refer to him as doctor.) He tells him additionally that before the end of the day, James will have committed three murders. The trouble is that James is an atheist who doesn’t believe in spiritual beings at all. The rest of the story consists of Nefarious’ efforts to convince James that he is real and to railroad him into publishing his book which the warden later discovers hidden in Brady’s cell along with a scrapbook revealing that Nefarious has been tracking James and grooming him for this role since he was a little boy.

The story is really a vehicle for exploring the nature of real evil and how it is countered. By the author’s own admission, it is a way to invite readers and viewers to consider the Christian faith as the best and only counter for the various troubles our society is facing. Along the way, he pulls back the evil of assisted suicide. This, Nefarious reveals, was James’ first murder when he ushered his own mother to receive that grisly end a few years before. James gives the standard, progressive defenses of the abominable practice which Nefarious quickly dismantles and lays bare James’ greed to get his hands on his mother’s small fortune which he was set to receive on her death; fortune that might have been largely exhausted if he had opted to care for her to a natural death instead of taking the assisted suicide route.

Deace also pulls back the curtain on the evil of abortion. This is James’ second murder. This scene is particularly compelling. James’ girlfriend happens to be going that very day to get the abortion James had pushed into instead of pledging to support the child they had created out of wedlock together. He once again offers up the standard pro-choice arguments for the horrible practice which Nefarious even more thoroughly casts to the side. If you are a supporter of abortion, you’ll have a bit harder time maintaining your position if you watch that scene.

The story dismantles a variety of other modern, generally progressive tropes that are all incompatible with the Christian worldview. But rather than simply pronouncing judgment and condemning them, it does so very subtly and thoughtfully. It draws you in and forces you to honestly consider the morality of each of these things and whether there is a better way for our nation to be going than continuing to follow the path we have been taking for far too long. And unlike so many other “Christian” movies, Nefarious never offers any kind of salvation moment or obvious Gospel presentation. In fact, the name “Jesus” is never spoken. Instead, Nefarious bitterly refers to Him as “the Carpenter,” and bemoans how He was God’s most devious trick. What they thought was their moment of greatest victory turned out to be a massive defeat they had been trying to turn back for two millennia.

Oh, and in one powerful scene, Nefarious completely dismantles progressive Christianity with its demythologization of the faith and its refusal to accept that a spiritual world really does exist beyond what we can see. A priest is invited to enter the interview room and Nefarious absolutely loses his mind until he discovers that the progressive priest doesn’t really believe in Jesus as Lord, and in fact is helping to do the work of his master by patronizingly directing people away from “the Carpenter” and assuring them they are just fine on their own.

I’ll let you discover what James’ third murder is when you watch the movie. And you really should watch it. It’s a powerful reminder of the belief of even demons and why genuine faith really does matter. Belief is good. Belief is necessary. Part of becoming a Christian is expressing our belief that Jesus was raised from the dead. But as James notes literally on either side of his observation of the worthless, pointless belief of demons in God, faith is the key, and faith without good works to demonstrate its validity is dead.

Evil is all around us. We swim in it every day. Too often we unthinkingly support or even take part in it. As followers of Jesus, we must be a part of our Lord’s efforts to oppose and stop it. As we have talked about fairly recently, the way to do that is to commit ourselves to living out the goodness of God. We need to double down on righteousness. We need to do that publicly. We need to do that privately. The righteousness of God cannot be merely something we preach. It has to be our personal practice. We need to stand boldly on what is true, speaking out with conviction and passion, but also kindness and clarity, against evil in our culture wherever we see it. We need to be winsome and wise, but we need to make sure our voice is heard. Even if it is only heard by a friend or a neighbor, we need to make sure we are heard. We need to proclaim what is true, we need to proclaim the Gospel, every chance we get. The fate of the world is at stake. Let’s get to work.