The Doctor’s Diagnosis: D
Much like superhero movies, I should have a stock review template for possession horror movies. This is my least favorite horror subgenre because filmmakers have done nothing interesting with it since The Exorcist. All genres and subgenres have tropes, certainly, but few kinds of movies are as beholden to an oddly specific set of tropes as the possession horror film. The Pope’s Exorcist is a particularly frustrating entry in this pantheon because it teases the audience with interesting ideas only to quickly revert to being yet another standard, utterly forgettable clone of the biggest horror film of all time. Any interesting ideas and questions that it raises are ultimately replaced by one all encompassing query: Why not just watch The Exorcist again instead?
Russell Crowe stars as the titular character, the Vatican’s chief exorcist that reports directly to the Pope himself. It is the opening scenes, focusing on Crowe’s character, when the film shows actual promise. The film posits that the exorcist dismisses almost all cases as mental health issues and refers the afflicted to psychologists. It is only in rare cases that he determines that the possessed are actually, well, possessed. That’s interesting. Also interesting is the layer of church politics in the opening scenes, as the exorcist is interrogated by some bishops (or cardinals or whatever) and he tells them that they need to speak to his boss. There is an interesting film to be made here about the church politics surrounding exorcisms and the delineation between mental health issues and the influence of the supernatural. For a few minutes, I thought that this would be that movie.
The Pope’s Exorcist isn’t that movie. Instead of exploring those issues, the film quickly whisks the exorcist away to investigate a possession case in Spain. At this point, all potentially interesting paths are abandoned in favor of every cliché in this genre’s tired arsenal. The possessed person is a child (a boy, in this case) that is suddenly cursing and speaking languages that he can’t possibly know. Sound familiar? But wait, get this: He can also bend his body at awkward angles and crawl on walls! Didn’t see that shit coming, did you? I don’t understand how in the hell filmmakers can still, 50 years after The Exorcist, be doing this same material and expect it to leave any impact on an audience. Hell, nothing in this movie even attempts to reach the shocking heights of The Exorcist. When a 50 year-old movie has a young girl masturbating with a crucifix and suggesting that someone’s mother may be sucking dicks in the underworld, a modern movie doesn’t exactly shock by having a kid shout profanity. These kinds of movies have had an odd de-escalation of intensity that leaves me shrugging my shoulders in indifference. I actually assumed that this was rated PG-13 until we see tits in the last twenty minutes or so and I think that’s the only reason for the R-rating. It’s also the only reason I didn’t fall asleep.
While I’m not a religious man, these movies work better when they are grounded in serious theological and ethical debate and ideas. I hate to keeping going back to it (as unavoidable as it is), but The Exorcist understood this. It was really a film about faith and the nature of good and evil; it just used the horror genre as a vessel for those ideas. The Pope’s Exorcist gets it in reverse; it frequently abandons such discussions in favor of cliché’s, almost as if it’s embarrassed by the prospect of seeming too intellectual. In addition to the mental health angle, the film introduces the idea that a demon was responsible for the Spanish Inquisition, which, if true, would have massive implications for the historical view of the church. But the film never does anything with this beyond using it as a framing device for some more “boo!” scares. It’s the film equivalent of someone who has really good ideas but is utterly incapable of articulating them.
Aside from some interesting ideas that are quickly abandoned, the highlight is Russell Crowe. His presence adds a sense of gravitas to an otherwise lightweight film. He projects a man that has seen a lot of shit and lives with the weight of immense, forbidden knowledge on his mind. It’s a character that I want to follow, but I feel like the film is showing a particularly boring chapter of his career. The rest of the performances are serviceable, but without making much of an impact. That is more the fault of the generic script than the actors, though.
This is directed by Julius Avery, which is disappointing because he directed one of my favorite movies of 2018 with Overlord. While Avery was able to do something interesting with the long-stagnant zombie subgenre with that film, he isn’t able to do the same here with possession movies. Unless you have never seen one of these movies before, The Pope’s Exorcist offers nothing new and certainly nothing scary. With an actual new sequel to The Exorcist on the release schedule for October, hopefully we’ll finally get something interesting out of a genre that’s been out of ideas since The Exorcist III in 1990. I’m not holding my breath, though.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pope’s_Exorcist#/media/File:ThePopesExorcistPoster.png
