The Pope’s Exorcist dissapoints you in every repetative way possible out there.
Horror has long had an unjustly terrible reputation. The poster or title of a movie is all that audiences need to decide whether or not to see it. It will be labeled “stupid” or “predictable” if it’s just a straight-up horror fest. If it’s an A24 independent horror film, the standard adjectives of “weird” or “not scary enough” will be used.
Publications will choose ardent detractors of the horror genre to review the newest entry in the category, giving the movie little chance whatsoever of receiving a fair evaluation. Until the day I die, I will stand up for the horror subgenre, and I will probably proclaim, with my last breath, that “Unfriended was one of the most innovative movies of all time.”
Father Gabriele Amorth, who worked as the top exorcist for the Vatican in the 1980s, is the subject of the movie, and it should have stayed that way. Despite being based on a genuine person’s life, The Pope’s Exorcist is most notable for how similar it is to previous horror films. The game of “name what movie or show they stole that from” is almost like it, and it’s much more fun than the actual movie.
It uses religion as a tool to arouse terror and dread in the audience, similar to Drag Me to Hell, and it pulls from the haunted home tales that dominated the 2010s. It also has an 80s backdrop and children who are possessed. With a little child who is possessed and screams things you’d only expect to hear on the New York subway at three in the morning, it also borrows heavily from The Exorcist, as the title should have already hinted at.
However, all of these movies succeeded in adding subtlety to their own stories, in contrast to The Pope’s Exorcist, a 2023 theatrical release that resembles a straight-to-video B-movie from the 2000s.
You guessed it—Father Gabriele Amorth is the exorcist for the Vatican assigned by the Pope. He is played by Russell Crowe with a dubious Italian accent. But he’s a cool exorcist, not your typical one. He travels on a Vespa and isn’t averse to settling in for a conversation with the newest demon-possessed child.
He is seen in the first scene of the movie questioning the demon who purports to be Satan himself while doing so in Italy in the late 1980s. Instead, Amorth casts the spirit into a pig, who promptly dies in the bloodiest manner shown in the entire movie for some reason, using the power of God (or Catholicism, or whatever).
To the chagrin of the traditionalist Amorth, the Vatican rejects his tactics as it tries to modernize and stay up with the times.
Bam! A month later, you are in Spain and are traveling with a typical white American family. After all, this is a terrible horror film! Alex Essoe plays Julia, a widowed single mother who recently transferred her rebellious teenage daughter Amy (Laurel Marsden) and her mute and traumatized son Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) to the enormous, unsettling castle that her late husband left for them in the Spanish countryside. Obviously!
S**t hits the fan before they even get their second foot in the door. The house’s inside walls are haunted, and the demon immediately manifests itself by taking possession of Henry. The movie turns offensive at this point, going from being poor.
The sex demon in a child narrative is overused and regarded as being too obscene for contemporary audiences. The Exorcist is from that era, although it likewise avoided using shock as a plot device. In this picture, a demon-possessed Henry is touching his mother’s breasts while berating her for not nursing him. If the entire movie hadn’t been so misogynistic (more on that later), it could have gotten away with it.
So, in just 30 minutes, the family with no last name has had a really rough time and needs a priest’s assistance. Father Esquibel, a sincere local priest (Daniel Zovatto), offers his assistance, but he’s the wrong one! The Kim Kardashian of priests—the Pope’s personal exorcist—is needed to exorcise the monster. You can essentially foresee the rest after Gabriele completes the journey.
The Pope’s Exorcist is a movie from (what was thought to be) the past. Horror films with a religious theme that lack any sort of moral message or depth are played for shock value and “frightening” visuals; the plot takes a back seat to whatever is required for the trailer to dare people to watch it. It is classed R, mostly to appease the teenage lads who will see a few glimpses of bare breasts.
The Pope’s Exorcist makes a vain attempt to address the Catholic Church’s now-hated reputation, but solely to remain relevant in 2023. The women in the story are portrayed as merely maternal or sexual beings, as was previously stated.
When possessed by a demon, they yell obscenities like, “The Devil fucked me last night,” and for no apparent reason, they suddenly become nude. Even Amy, a minor girl who is sexualized from the moment she appears on film, is stretched to include in this. Again, without it, it wouldn’t be a bad horror movie! Amorth makes an odd animal noise to a group of nuns that sounds like they are cooing babies, probably to make himself seem appealing.
The acting is at most average; everyone involved is presumably well aware that they are too talented for this garbage. I’ll never understand how they managed to cast an Oscar winner in the lead role. But you might not recognize Crowe as a superb actor right away if you weren’t familiar with his earlier masterpieces.
Similar to Poirot’s mustache origin tale in Death on the Nile, the movie pushes you to care about the protagonist’s wartime past, yet no previous pain can make the surface-level figure sympathetic. Crowe tries to add humor to the more serious parts of the scenario, but it’s so out of place that it makes you laugh inappropriately.
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When the demon-possessed Henry screams at Amorth, “My name is a nightmare,” Amorth responds, “My nightmare is France winning the World Cup.” This is an example of this (and of how terrible the writing is). Here, that is what we are utilizing.
The notion that “if a horror film isn’t scary then it’s immediately bad” applies to all movies and irritates me to no end. A horror movie isn’t always bad or “didn’t do its job” because you didn’t jump or scream in the theater. Jump scares and horrifying monsters can, however, nevertheless be entertaining even when the plot isn’t really excellent. The Pope’s Exorcist isn’t the movie for you if all you want to do is be terrified.
The film’s director, Julius Avery, who last made the Sylvester Stallone-starring Samaritan in 2022, adopts the “go big or go home approach” and simply bombards the spectator with a stream of generic horror images like possessed children, skeletons, and horrific drawings in the hopes that something would stick (it doesn’t). Michael Bay would undoubtedly find the misogyny and overtly inept graphics to be a terrible combination.
The possessed people’s makeup gives them the appearance of botched Botox treatments, and the CGI is a worse version of just about every monster from the 2010s. The use of huge mouths and dark eyes has already been done, and better. The movie tries to cram in so many subplots and theological contexts that it runs out of time to effectively develop a fear. Only those who are about five years too young to be able to legally see this movie would genuinely be scared by it.
The bleak horror film lineup of the late 2000s and early 2010s would have made The Pope’s Exorcist a great match. Characters and storylines are put on the back burner in favor of terrifying images, religion is weaponized to enhance the stakes, and women are only featured as sexual criminals, sexual teens, or sexual mothers. In a time when the genre is prospering, it is distressing to see the darker recollections of it given a home. Even though it’s only April 2023 has already produced several instant horror classics. Before watching the terrible time waster The Pope’s Exorcist, do yourself a favor and watch Infinity Pool or Scream VI.
