The Pope’s Exorcist
Normally I would have passed this movie by, but something drew me to it. I think it was laziness. A long, long time ago, I watched a movie called The Exorcist in the theater with many other shocked people. If you haven’t seen that one in a while, revisit, like I did recently. It’s still shocking, despite the dated look. It will also be scarier than this movie, unfortunately. Catholic ritual seems to owe a lot to paganism to my eye, and has for a long time, and I think this helps me view events on screen free from religious prejudice. So, it was up to the filmmakers to scare me.
The story is pretty simple. The Pope’s chief exorcist, Father Amorth (based on the life works of an actual Catholic priest and exorcist) is called to Spain to see about a young American boy whose mother has brought him and his sister to the ancestral family estate of the mom’s late husband. The plan is to renovate the ancient pile and sell it in lieu of insurance money, but a lurking evil has other plans. Father Amorth arrives, battle is done against evil and you’ll have to watch the film to see how that shakes out.
Cinematically, this is a really pretty movie until a certain point. It’s almost like Zack Snyder has jumped in with a bullhorn and called for More Action! and Less Artistry! The first two thirds of the movie has great lighting, with a solid bit of mystical looking shots. People don’t give great lighting the homage it deserves. At one point there is a great jump scare that involves light paired with sound that made me levitate off the couch for a moment. Camera movement, again, up to a certain point, is subtle and gives a rather quiet movie a little something extra without a lot of fanfare. The music tries hard to be scary but totally fails. If the subtitles hadn’t told me it was “ominous” I wouldn’t have noticed. A movie like this has to have excellent makeup work to portray a child possessed by a demon, and I thought this was okay.
Story wise, there are some obvious allusions to that exorcist movie I mentioned earlier. Two priests, secret sins, violence from the demon, it’s all there, except for a disappointing lack of Really Yucky Moments. An added layer in this film is that there is a DaVinci Code lite investigation of an ancient and gigantic Papal coverup that is every bit as evil as the demon inside the boy. That addition diluted the film as a horror story, but would make a good movie of its own if used as the central idea.
As tends to happen in movies like this, it seems to be women who are the ultimate bad guys. They just make the men a little crazy, ya know? Maybe in another couple of thousand years religion can outgrow that.
Up to the point the story divides into two parts it’s not bad. The jump scare, a bit of foreboding, some nice work by the boy of portraying an ancient demon, all of it well done. Then the movie turns into an Indiana Jones style action fest and loses the plot. So to speak. The boy is played by Peter DeSouza-Feighoney (Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare), the second priest by Daniel Zovatto (Station Eleven and a slew of works in post-production), and Russel Crowe (Master and Commander, The Exorcism) are pretty good here.
I don’t know if the filmmakers lost their nerve and swerved from a not terrible straight up horror movie but I’m disappointed it happened. There was also one presidential continuity error that a simple googling would have caught. Points if you spot it. Overall I didn’t hate it, but except for the one mechanically produced jump scare it didn’t frighten me or even make me tense in anticipation. The very end was especially lame, but not surprising, given how well the film jumped the shark. If you go for exorcism movies you may enjoy the ambience and craft work, as well as Crowe’s acting. Again, I don’t think it’s a terrible film, but I feel like it started in a promising way then didn’t quite deliver.
Triggers: child endangerment, religious profanity, a bit of nudity
Available on: Netflix, Hulu, HBO/Max, fuboTV, Apple TV, Prime Video, Fandango at Home, YouTube
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CFR: In Addition
Ok, the first time I heard this movie title I thought “Wow the Pope really rates to have his own exorcist!” which made me laugh. Now I’m thinking I need to examine the maturity level of my sense of humor. (* giggle *)
I remember this movie coming out and I remember thinking that it really wasn’t going to be as good as the original masterpiece The Exorcist. Cranky and I watched some of that the last time we met and wow, what a magnificent piece of cinema. Seriously. It is one of the best movies ever made. Hence my review: Movie Review: “The Exorcist” . So I guess I can have mercy and feel sorry for movies that have come later because, well, you can’t touch perfection. IMHO.
Were my husband still alive today, we would probably watch this during October. We tried to watch one new scary movie a day. I probably won’t watch it now. It is hard to watch scary movies without my husband to hold my hand.
Now on a personal note, the idea of demonic posession made me laugh. Seriously laugh. Until, one time I saw a dark figure bend over a friend who had a serious drinking problem. They often changed personality depending on how much they had drunk. I remember the figure looking at me and I smacked at it and it ran away. For a while, I dreamed about killing demons with my bare hands. That loved one passed a while ago and so did the dreams. So do I think this phenomena is real? I don’t know. But if someone had experienced what I did, I can see how some people might think so.
Now finally, oh good grief. I read that women are the “bad” characters in the movie and that would annoy me if I watched and frankly, not made the exorcist/priests sympathetic to me. But since I haven’t seen it, I can’t address that any more. Other than sigh and can’t you think of something else writers?
Check out the movie if you want and I hope you enjoy it.
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