Written by: Michael Petroni & Evan Spiliotopoulos
Starring: Russell Crowe, Daniel Zovatto, Alex Essoe, Franco Nero, Peter DeSouza-Feighoney
Rating: [2/5]
Certain elements can serve as a dead giveaway to what we can expect from a film’s quality. Typically we can see this with who sits at the director’s helm, who stars in it, the plot, or even in the case of The Pope’s Exorcist, the title. One must know what they’re getting into, especially when it has Russell Crowe doing, let’s say, an interesting accent and even then it woefully struggles with its head-scratching narrative decisions.
Known as the personal exorcist of the pope who gets called upon to take on special cases of exorcism, Father Gabriele Amorth (Russell Crowe) gets called upon in a case in Spain of a young boy possessed by a demon. Upon his arrival, he sees this demon will pose a challenge unlike anything he has ever faced before and will force him to confront issues of his past along the way.
As predictably bad as a movie could get, The Pope’s Exorcist never sought to bring actual quality to the big screen but rather find some audacious ways to entertain through the prism of the popular exorcist subgenre within horror. Admittedly, I am a sucker for these films, as it serves as one of my ultimate “what ifs” about real-world terrors that could exist. This film does not claim to take place within real events much like the stories of Ed and Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring movies but it definitely plays its fiction into some conspiratorial elements of the Vatican.
While much of the focus of this film stays with the acts of exorcism in Spain, this film does shed some light on the political machinations of this important hierarchy and how it impacts the work Father Gabriele Amorth tries to get done. Apparently, being the personal exorcist specialist comes with its perks but does not leave him immune from individual cardinals pushing their particular agenda. Now, does this receive any real exploration? No, but their further integration of the Vatican political issue in addition to all else does add a bit of texture that gets wildly silly later on.
Getting to the exorcism and Father Gabriele Amorth in Spain, we get the typical backstory of a family moving into a new place and in this case they were not aware of the demon that awaited them. The moments of the exorcism and the struggles Father Gabriele Amorth has in trying to extract it goes in places I did not quite expect but as expected from this film. These scenes feel completely unpolished in their presentation and do not necessarily produce any real terror when we get into the meat of it. This demon plays some games and presents quite the challenge to Father Gabriele Amorth but none of it really translates into anything memorable.
Just as the film appears to wade into standard fare, it does get into wild territory in what it shifts into. It simply just kept going into larger conspiratorial ideas of how this particular church has plenty of history with the Vatican and then we have the moments that further involve the pope and the past of Father Gabriele Amorth and the other priest alongside with him that do not necessarily work but definitely play into the vision of what this film sought to accomplish in getting absolutely strange. I will certainly give it credit for its attempt of going out there with its zaniness but none of it really works and it continues to feel like threads getting thrown out there for the sake of creating something memorable.
As much as we all love Russell Crowe putting on an accent and riding his little scooter around as an exorcist priest, The Pope’s Exorcist came and went pretty much the way I initially anticipated. It provides the slightest bit of entertainment for those who enjoy their exorcist films and we can certainly appreciate some of the big swings it takes, but it remains something that does not really execute on any of its elements particularly well and does not necessarily wow in anything it seeks to achieve. Undoubtedly some will find slivers of fun in the silliness of this movie, but it did not move me nor really capture my sustained interest.
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