I watched a film called "Nefarious" that was released earlier this year and recommended by someone whose podcast I follow. I'd never heard of it. (It did not get great reviews, but given it's subject matter I understood why.) Whoever did the marketing made a disastrous choice with the poster artwork that has little to do with the actual film on whose face is a supernatural thriller. The plot without spoilers: a psychiatrist is sent to a prison to determine whether or not a convicted killer scheduled for execution that night is sane or insane. If he finds he man insane he cannot be executed under state law. The killer claims that he's possessed by a demon who forced him to carry out multiple murders.
Most of the action takes place in a prison common room between the shrink and the convict. If someone had told me this in advance I might have said, thanks, I'll pass. However, I could not have been more wrong: the back and forth exchange is not unlike a duel where each man is confident his superior prowess will defeat the other. It's frequently riveting and charged with suspense. Interestingly, it was billed by some as a "Christian" movie. Although I was raised as one, I left church-going when I was in high school so I have no skin in the game. Nevertheless, it has not escaped me that Christianity gets bashed regularly by the media as though it acquired an unsavoury affiliation with people or groups the establishment likes to regularly demonize. Given the precarious times we live in, you'd have to be completely inert not to draw an association between a certain religion-bashing and the fact that one of the first things non-democratic regimes do is ban religion and elevate the state as the supreme power.
The thing is, this film is ultimately not about religious belief vs. atheism or whether or not real demons exist. It's about the demons (and their foot soldiers) living among us who are dismantling life as we know it by using money, power, and prestige, along with a blend of adroitly dressing up a wolf in sheep clothing and using warm and fuzzy rhetoric to disguise their bad motive under an ostensible good one.
People regularly rant about how Hollywood churns out unwatchable tripe riddled with propaganda, and not without justification. But I was actually heartened to see a well-crafted film that's not only entertaining, but thought-provoking and with a potent message that has something to do with lying down with dogs--or in this case, with demons. It's a tiny gem of a film that deserves more attention than it got.
You can stream this movie if you're resourceful, wink, wink (and don't use Google as a search engine. Use Brave).