This is the second time that Scott Derrickson and his co-writer Paul Harris Boardman have done a “true life” exorcism movie, and like “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” it’s a blend. The earlier picture was a mixture of horror movie and courtroom drama; this one combines the chills with police melodrama. Unfortunately, despite Derrickson’s technical facility—which was also obvious in the intervening “Sinister”—the slow-burning “Evil” is no more successful than “Emily Rose” was.

Based loosely on the experiences of NYPD detective turned paranormal investigator Ralph Sarchie (played by Eric Bana), it begins with a prologue set in 2010 Iraq, where three American soldiers—Griggs (Scott Johnsen), Jimmy (Chris Coy) and Santino (Sean Harris)—investigate what appears to be an ancient religious site littered with bats and human skulls (never a good sign). Three years later Sarchie, partnered in a “special ops” team with wisecracking partner Butler (Joel McHale), is called to three cases that turn out to be related. The first finds a crazed Jimmy beating his wife and having to be chased down. In the second, an incoherent woman named Jane (Olivia Horton) tosses her toddler into the lion’s den at the Bronx Zoo, and we learn that a ghoulish man, later revealed to be Santino, has been painting the exhibit’s walls to cover some odd writing. Finally, an Italian family claims that evil goings-on are occurring in the basement of their home, and Griggs’s body is discovered there. The cycle is completed when it’s revealed that Jane is Griggs’s wife.

Much of the movie’s first half is devoted to solemnly laying out all of this, as well as depicting Sarchie’s strained home life with pregnant wife Jen (Olivia Munn) and soccer-loving daughter Christina (Lulu Wilson). But by then another important figure has been introduced—Mendoza (Edgar Ramirez), a scruffy-looking fellow who turns out to be a Jesuit priest who works with the less fortunate—like Jane—and happens to have a sideline in exorcism. He ultimately persuades Sarchie, a lapsed Catholic, not only that demonic forces are at work here, but that Sarchie has a special spiritual power to detect satanic activity. Together they work out that Santino was possessed in Iraq, that the writing he was erasing at the Zoo (and was found at the other crime scenes) was an incantation—curiously, in Latin and Persian—inviting a demon to enter the human world from hell, and that his peculiar skills make both Sarchie and his family targets of the demon that’s operating through Santino. All this leads up to a prolonged exorcism of Santino at the police station while Jen and Christina’s lives hang in the balance.

This précis presents the narrative in a linear fashion that has little resemblance to the screenplay’s zigs, zags and misdirections. And it doesn’t emphasize the many opportunities Derrickson and Boardman insert for grisly scenes—putrefying , maggot-ridden corpses and blood-drenched victims—and sequences that are intended to creep us out, as when Sarchie investigates a spooky basement or walks carefully along darkened hallways (a Derrickson specialty that was a major part of “Sinister,” too). There are also entirely too many cheap jolts, often involving the sudden appearance of a screeching cat or a barking dog, and a particularly hackneyed scene in a child’s bedroom, where toys take on a threatening life of their own (does any kid really have a jack-in-the-box anymore?). The piece de resistance, however, is the elaborate exorcism scene, which is larded with lots of special effects but is played out in a curiously programmatic fashion: Martinez sagely informs Sarchie that it will happen in three stages, and by George it does as if ticking off items on a checklist. And it’s presented as a virtually automatic process, so that the priest can declare when it’s only half-finished and when it’s done. William Friedkin rightly dramatized it as a far more uncertain and difficult business.

The result of all this is that while Derrickson once again proves a skilled practitioner of genre tropes, they’re not unusual or striking enough to be genuinely frightening; indeed, too often they come across as pretty familiar stuff, especially when presented as deliberately as they are here. Bana certainly throws himself into the lead role, endowing Sarchie with considerable intensity, and Ramirez brings a seen-it-all weariness to the hardworking Martinez, though he does have ac tendency to mumble dialogue. McHale is stuck with one of those brazen characters that might as well have “Dead Meat” stenciled on his bulletproof vest and can’t give Butler any shading, and nary a hint of subtlety is required of Harris, Coy or Horton, all of whom simply chew the scenery mercilessly. Munn, by contrast, is utterly wasted in a thoroughly pedestrian part. Scott Kevan’s cinematography emphasizes the dankness of the story, but sometimes makes good use of light and shadow for effect, while the appropriately-named James Hellman’s editing has a lethargic feel, and some sudden cuts from night to day or from sunshine to rain suggest the process wasn’t always smooth. Christopher Young’s score adds atmosphere but also bellows overmuch at key moments.

Marked by a solemnity that frequently lapses into either silliness or tedium, this thriller ultimately just fails to deliver the goods.