Fallen (1998)

Fallen (1998), directed by Gregory Hoblit.

After attending the execution of a scary serial killer he caught, a homicide detective slowly comes to believe the awful truth: that an ancient demon is passing from body to body. It's mission: pain and murder, particularly the intricate persecution of our hero.

In some ways this is a modest supernatural thriller, but I am quite fond of it because it represents a rare horror genre: the sad, autumnal quality of evil. In a lot of popular entertainment evil is interesting, seductive, "Their Satanic Majesties". It is more unusual to show evil as sad, the product of broken, limited beings.

This film and the Millennium (1996) TV series with Lance Henriksen are the most prominent examples I can recall.

It helps that the cast includes actors we tend to love:

Notes:

Available on Blu-ray.

http://watershade.net/public/fallen.jpg