For tonight’s movie I’m checking out the Russel Crowe lead exorcism horror “The Popes Exorcist”. This is a fictional story, based on a real life exorcists experiences. Specifically that of Father Gabriele Amorth. Perhaps the most famous real life exorcist, who has written multiple books on his experiences. The film stars Russel Crowe as Amorth, with Daniel Zovatto, Alex Essoe, and Franco Nero supporting. It was directed by Julius Avery (Who made the pretty good horror “Overlord” in 2018). Michael Petroni and Evan Spiliotopoulos provide the screenplay. Cinematography is by Laurie Rose and Fabian Wagner and the Jed Kurzel provides the soundtrack.
Father Gabriele Amorth (Crowe), returns to Rome from his latest assignment and is tasked by the Pope (Nero) to take on a potential exorcism in Spain. The Pope has deep concerns about this one and fears a powerful demon my be involved. He is sent to an old Abbey that has recently been inherited by a woman called “Julia” and her children “Henry” and “Amy”. The Abbey was the sole possession of Julia’s husband, who passed away recently. They intend to renovate and sell the property to deal with their financial issues. However the work on the Abbey seems to have freed a demonic spirit that has taken possession of young Henry. It is up to Father Amorth and a young local priest “Father Tomas Esquibe” to exorcise the demon and free the child.
The Devil in The Detail
This is actually surprisingly good. But it does suffer from the big problem of exorcism movies. They all tend to follow the formula of the original Exorcist and as a result they tend to lack much in the way of originality. It’s like if 90% of slashers were set at lakeside camps. You basically know to expect a couple of priests, a child in a bed saying all kinds of nasty stuff and some special effects designed to make the possessed extra disturbing. Because of all this, it’s one of my least favorite genres. When I do like possession movies it’s usually ones that approach it differently such as “Nefarious“, “Fallen” or “Exorcist III”.
Given we know what to expect, what makes this movie stand out? Well, some very good special effects for those disturbing moments, it uses a real life exorcist as the lead character and Russel Crowe puts in a top notch performance. The finale also moves past the usual exorcist tropes to provide something a bit more visually satisfying. It’s interesting to note, Crowe was in another exorcism film recently “The Exorcism”, which did do something different… and wasn’t very good. So it’s not always about having the original idea, sometimes it’s all in the execution. The movie is well paced too and does a good job of working in callbacks and the two priests respective weaknesses.
Conclusion
This is a pretty fast paced exorcism movie, wasting almost none of it’s 103 minute running time. It also makes the most of it’s $18m production budget. A fairly normal budget for a horror. The style of the effects seems heavily influenced vengeful spirit movies, including the whole upside down walking on fours thing and limbs moving in inhuman ways. It works well here and the small main cast keeps it tight and efficient. We probably need need the scenes with the other priests and the pope, but then when you call a film “The Pope’s Exorcist” you probably do want the pope in it.
Overall this is one of the better exorcism movies. Not that it’s a highest of bars. In many ways these are similar to Werewolf movies. That is to say, it’s easy to make them, but very hard to make a good one. They succeeded. This is a strong 6.5/10. I can’t really give it higher, because it’s still basically just following the exorcism movie formula. I wasn’t blown away, but I had a good time and it was better than I expected.