Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Julius Avery
Starring: Russell Crowe, Daniel Zovatto, Alex Essoe, Franco Nero, Laurel Marsden, Ralph
Ineson
Many women and quite a few men would agree that there's no hotter man than
a hot priest. Stick an average looking bloke in a black shirt and white
collar and he's suddenly transformed into an unattainable object of lust.
Similarly, nobody is cooler than a cool priest. We expect priests to be
stuffy and boring, so whenever we encounter one with a sense of humour and a modicum of personality it
makes them seem like the most charismatic soul we've ever met.
As played by Russell Crowe, Father Gabriel Amorth is one cool
priest. He swills whisky before battling demons, flirts with nuns, makes
wisecracks, ruffles the feathers of church authorities and rides around Rome
on a vespa while dressed like Orson Welles in F for Fake. I mean, he's a bloody exorcist, and not just any exorcist - he's the
Pope's exorcist!!! It doesn't get any cooler.
If Amorth's name sounds familiar to horror fans it's likely due to his
being the subject of a William Friedkin directed documentary,
The Devil and Father Amorth, which detailed the priest performing one of the many exorcisms of his
three decades long career as the Vatican's numero uno demon fighter. Amorth
was something of a maverick, threatening to expose the church's sins, but he
was also a bit of a crank, once claiming that Yoga and Harry Potter books
served as gateways to Satanism.
Crowe's Amorth is very much a maverick, and there are moments where he even
hints at his church's wrongdoings, few of which had been exposed in 1987,
when this story takes place. But his more negative aspects are swept aside
to allow Crowe to play the priest as a charming rogue in a collar. Crowe has
benefitted greatly from what I like to call the Depardieu Effect, which sees
an actor become more interesting as their waistline expands. Here he
resembles a papal Pavarotti, his great frame spilling over the sides of his
scooter like two satchels filled with ham.
There's a soothing, ASMR-like quality to watching Crowe ride around on his
Vespa, but it's when he's interacting with others that Crowe really gets to
have fun hamming it up. No maverick priest trope is left unused as Amorth
storms into a Spanish abbey where a newly arrived American woman's (Alex Essoe, repeating her Shelley Duvall schtick from
Doctor Sleep) young son (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) has become the latest target for
possession. The kid takes on a sickly visage that gives him the appearance
of a 10-year-old Dario Argento and spouts obscenities with the voice of
Ralph Ineson.
As is always the case in these movies, the demon gets under the skin of
our priest hero by bringing up some long festering residual guilt. This
time it's a young girl Amorth failed to save from possession. The demon
also targets Amorth's obligatory handsome young sidekick priest, Father
Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto), mocking him as a "panty sniffer."
It all leads to the inevitable climax of theological theatrics, but
director Julius Avery goes over-the-top with bayonets drawn,
introducing exploding naked babes and gates to Hell. Most exorcism movies
fail due to misguided attempts to ape Friedkin's classic, and inevitably
end up as dull, ponderous slogs. Avery seems more content to mimic the
sort of Exorcist knockoffs that came out of Italy and Spain
in the '70s, all operatic blood-letting, gratuitous nudity and oddball
protagonists. It's a refreshing approach that saves what is otherwise a
standard exorcism thriller from fading into the overcrowded market. It's
pure trash, but it's happy to be trash, and crucially, it seems to enjoy
its trashiness.
The Catholic church usually understandably steers well clear of endorsing
movies like this, so it's surprising to see that
The Pope's Exorcist is executive produced by high-ranking
Jesuit priest Father Edward J. Siebert and backed by the production wing of
Loyola Marymount, a Jesuit university in California. The movie's
resolution suggests the assembling of a team of crack exorcists, a sort of
Vatican Avengers, so might we see more Catholic hijinks from this group?
This made me wonder what it might be like if Catholic priests began
following the lead of those American Protestant pastors who bring their
congregations to see the latest faith-based movie after Sunday service.
Can you imagine Father O'Reilly and 47 old dears rolling out to see
The Pope's Exorcist after Sunday mass?
The Pope's Exorcist is on UK/ROI
VOD now.
