By Keith Walther | Rose Law Group Reporter
Russell Crowe’s first foray into the horror genre is met with disappointment. “The Pope’s Exorcist” is unimaginative, only achieving a complete lack of suspense or horror throughout the entirety of the movie. The paint by numbers approach is bad enough, but it somehow gets worse.
The film gets off to a bad start with the title alone. No, this is not a movie about a pope being possessed by demonic forces that requires an exorcism as the title implies. “The Pope’s Exorcist” is actually about a real priest who was the Vatican’s leading exorcist from 1986-2016. Sounds pretty interesting, but the execution is anything but.
Father Gabriel Amorth (Russell Crowe) has performed more than 60,000 exorcisms in his life according to him. The Pope (Franco Nero) has sent the unconventional priest on a high priority mission to Spain in 1987 to investigate the possible demonic possession of a little boy named Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney). What the veteran exorcist encounters at this Spanish Abbey is anything but typical, and he quickly discovers this powerful demonic force has ulterior motives. He must rely on his inner strength and faith in addition to the help from the local priest, Father Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto), Henry’s mother Julia (Alex Essoe), and Henry’s sister Amy (Laurel Marsden) to outwit and defeat the hellish beast.
The premise had solid potential, but director Julius Avery runs it straight into the crypt. He basically mimics every other possession-based horror film and does it quite poorly. Whether it’s rattling objects, swirling gusts inside an enclosed room, contorting bodies to scale walls, or regurgitating gross oddities, Avery includes everything that’s already been done before and done to much greater effect. He stops just short of including a projectile pea soup vomiting scene. Maybe he thought that would be too obvious.
Readers may find it incredulous that there is not a single moment of spine-tingling suspense or even a simple jump scare throughout the film, but Julius Avery finds a way. He fails to understand how to intensify the tension in a horror film simply by using lighting techniques and camera angles to generate fear in the audience of the unknown terror lurking just beyond the reach of light. The subpar cinematography coupled with a yawn inducing, ordinary score produces an adrenaline killing snooze fest that makes viewers yearn for a quick and merciful ending.
Then there’s the antagonist, a demonically possessed little boy that’s about as intimidating as a rabid chipmunk. There’s absolutely no character development or build up to him becoming possessed, so there’s no possibility of emotional attachment to his character. One minute, he’s a typically curious boy, and the next he’s a foul-mouthed demon shouting obscenities at anyone who will listen while making his eyes turn different colors. Not to mention, he’s confined to his bed the whole time, so he’s not able to cause real physical harm to any of the other characters unless they stupidly lean in close to his face, which one of them does of course (insert rolling eye emoji here).
If there’s any positive takeaways to be had from this movie, it’s Russell Crowe, but that’s reaching. He may no longer be in “Gladiator” form, which makes the visual of him driving a tiny Vespa from Rome to Spain amusing, but he’s still a talented actor who has an effortless approach to his craft. He flawlessly incorporates an Italian accent while managing to convincingly speak at least four different languages in the movie. He also portrays this real priest with accuracy, using unconventional methods and bucking the authority of the Vatican from time to time.
“The Pope’s Exorcist” is a truly bad horror film that does not deserve one second of your attention. The only disconcerting possession happening here is the studio possessing your money for the ticket. If you want to watch this brand of horror, then stick with the best like “The Exorcist” or “The Conjuring.”
This movie earns:
