Nefarious (2023)

On the day of his execution, a convicted killer named Edward Wayne Brady informs the psychiatrist sent to evaluate him that he is not a man at all but a demon called Nefarious, and that before the night is out the doctor will have committed three murders of his own. This is the premise of a two-hander set almost entirely inside a single interrogation room, and it is a tidy one. The film is less interested in whether the demon exists than in using him as a vessel for argument. Sean Patrick Flanery does the heavy lifting, switching between a cowering host and a grinning tempter with a stage actor's relish, while Jordan Belfi sits across the table and absorbs the sermon.

That sermon is the point. Nefarious lectures on abortion, on sin, on the pagan sacrifices to Molech, on the ease with which a modern man mistakes his own comfort for virtue. The dialogue functions as a mouthpiece, and the reviews said as much, with critics reaching for the same phrase about heavy-handed proselytizing. There is no ambiguity to negotiate and no counterargument granted any weight. The film is a tract that has been fitted with a runtime and a death row.

Against the markers we now use to measure a film's social consciousness, the ledger is empty. No diversity casting of any note, no queer subtext, no racial reckoning, no climate anxiety, no critique of capital, no body positivity, and no advocacy for neurodivergence, since the film explicitly argues its killer is not mentally ill but possessed. The lecturing itself remains, sustained and unembarrassed. Whether that counts as a flaw depends entirely on whether the viewer arrived already agreeing. A sequel is in development.