209. The Pope's Exorcist; movie review
THE POPE'S EXORCIST
Cert 15
103 mins
BBFC advice: Contains horror, violence, bloody images, sex references, sexual threat, language
Haven't we been here before? Ever since William Friedkin's classic The Exorcist, there have been cinematic versions of a theme.
The big surprise is that this is the first one dedicated to the big daddy of real-life exorcists.
Gabriele Amorth was employed by the Pope and was called in on tens of thousands of reported demonic possessions.
However, Julius Avery's film is not about an actual event but an amalgam of details of incidents chronicled in Father Amorth's books.
The Pope's Exorcist stars Russell Crowe in the leading role, going for a foreign accent again or occasionally morphing completely into Italian.
He is sent by his boss to a former abbey in Spain where a young boy (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) appears to have been possessed.
At first, the priest believes it may simply be a reaction to his traumatic past but he soon finds out that the devil is at play.
Alex Essoe portrays the boy's understandably distressed mum while Laurel Marsden portrays his progressively more destabilised sister.
As with all of these movies, the possessed child growls obscenities, has blood-red eyes, messages scrawled across his body and preys on the weaknesses of the exorcists.
In this case, Amorth is joined by a young Spanish priest (Daniel Zovatto) and they both have skeletons which the demon lifts from their respective closets.
The action is relatively entertaining but, ultimately, the conclusion is predictable and we have now been set up for more adventures from the Pope's Exorcist and his pal.
Reasons to watch: Tense thriller
Reasons to avoid: Familiar hocus pocus
Laughs: None
Jumps: None
Vomit: None
Nudity: None
Overall rating: 6/10
Did you know? The real-life Gabriel Amorth performed at least 60,000 exorcisms during his ministry and claimed Hitler and Stalin were possessed by the Devil.
The final word. Russell Crowe: "One of the things with a film like that is, you do have to look after everybody because you're going into some weird places and you've just got to check in with people, that everybody's got their feet on the ground. One of the things we would do on a Sunday afternoon, we'd get together and play tennis, which is the exact opposite of the darkness we were dealing with in our work days." EW.com
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