The Pope's Exorcist (2023)

★
The Pope's Exorcist is a clunky and unimpressive exorcism movie that looks good but does nothing new in its presentation of a possessed child who speaks with a gravelly voice. I grew impatient as every minute passed. I started thinking of better movies in this genre, and if that's what I'm doing in the first 20 minutes, then that is because this movie kept falling short of even the most modest of expectations. It features frights, screeches, levitations, superhuman strength and even necks that twist around. If Linda Blair watched this, she couldn't be faulted if she stood up proud and took a bow before everyone around her and declared that she did it better. Even the puke scene was derivative, although it wasn't pea soup this time but blood. I suppose director Julius Avery had to draw the line somewhere with the nods to 1973's The Exorcist, but the inclusion of ghostly writing on a child's belly makes me wonder if anyone—anyone—during preproduction meetings asked if there were too many similarities with William Friedkin's iconic horror show. There's even a freakin' spider walk.

Russell Crowe sports a neat accent as Father Gabriele Amorth, an eccentric priest who uses unorthodox methods when performing exorcisms on people he suspects are just mentally ill. As the movie opens, he dares a demon to leave its human victim and possess a pig, which is subsequently shot. His superiors do not approve of his techniques, but he is the pope's exorcist, and his position affords him a little bit of leeway. The pope (Franco Nero) gives him an assignment. He will travel to Spain to investigate the possible possession of a young boy, Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney). Henry's mother Julia (Alex Essoe) arrived in Spain with children in tow to visit an Abbey they inherited from her deceased husband. A gas leak scares off the renovation crew, leaving the family behind and vulnerable to an evil presence that takes over the boy. Medical tests reveal nothing. The demon demands a priest, so Father Tomas Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto) arrives to visit the boy, but the demon rejects him and demands someone else.

Father Amorth shows up and converses with the boy, and he soon realizes this is the real deal. An exorcism fails to chase it away. This abbey has a history. Father Amorth starts to follow the clues, which point to a well and the secret it holds underneath. There is a lot of backstory to uncover, but none of this adds any suspense, nor does it make the demon's motivation any more interesting. There is a specific reason why the demon wanted Father Amorth, and this might have been an interesting twist in a better movie, but here, it's too little too late. The biggest problem with The Pope's Exorcist is that the possessed kid gets way too much screen time. We are exposed to the demon's power early, so there are lots of scenes in which it taunts the priests and torments the family and shows off its power. The demon of The Exorcist was a menacing adversary early in that movie, but it was patient. It didn't want to reveal the full extent of its power. It preferred to lie dormant before unleashing its wrath, and then it retreated. This was to build up to the final confrontation, which was a furious subliminal and overt assault on the senses.

The demon in The Pope's Exorcist is just an exercise in makeup and audio effects. Really the only thing I found interesting about this entire production is Russell Crowe, who completely commits to the Father Amorth character. I liked his speech and his sense of humor. Father Amorth is based on a real person. Perhaps he really was a jolly fellow. A biopic about his life and starring Crowe would have been fascinating just for what Crowe would have brought to it. Instead, we get this derivative ghost story that does nothing new. Superhero movies are saturating the market, but exorcism movies aren't too far behind. I liked what The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) did, which was feature the frights and scares of a possession story but approach it in a legal setting. It was a courtroom drama inside a horror movie, which added a neat twist to the traditional story.

Prior to the final confrontation, Fathers Amorth and Esquibel prepare themselves by confessing their sins to one another. The movie, though, commits plenty of cinematic sins of its own, many of which I have outlined already, but there are more. There's a moody teenager (Henry's sister Amy, played by Laurel Marsden) who argues with her mother to create some drama, but this is resolved in the end without anyone coming to terms with why they were distant in the first place. Writers Michael Petroni and Evan Spiliotopoulos based their script on the books of the real Gabriele Amorth. I wonder if they give any credit to William Peter Blatty. They probably should, because too much of this story resembles The Exorcist. Whatever filmmaking team comes along next to step up to the plate and attempt to create the next great exorcist movie, it needs to learn what not to do, and watching The Pope's Exorcist would be an excellent start.

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