The Pope's Exorcist
Cert: 15 / 103 mins / Dir. Julius Avery / Trailer
Well, the Devil may have all the best tunes, but his screenplays are still appalling. Hollywood's favourite midlife crisis Russell Crowe barges his way through Evan Spiliotopoulos and Michael Petroni's ham-fisted script as Father Gabriel Amorth, The Pope's Exorcist*1, called away from Rome in 1987 to investigate an apparent demonic possession*2. Out in the Italian countryside (by which I mean rural Ireland, where it was filmed), a newly-arrived American family have moved into a deconsecrated church built right on top of a portal to Hell which opens when a builder nudges a brick in the cellar*3. Standard.
Gabe spends the film meting out righteously maverick Mediterranean justice, leaving a trail of dead farm animals in his wake while exposing higher clerical ineptitude. The Godfather Ted, if you will.
ENGLISH
Making the worst of a thuddingly linear storyline, Russell's dialogue is deftly split 80/20 between English and Italian*4. While I cannot vouch for the linguistic accuracy (or otherwise) of the latter, Crowe's accent work as 'world-weary Roman cleric' comes out closer to 'Polish Welder'*5. There are lines in his script which appear structured like dryly funny, off-hand quips, but our hero delivers them with the timing and nuance of a toddler looming over a box of eggs with a claw hammer.
Arguably more egregious though is Ralph Ineson as the voice of the spirit possessing the unfortunate child, who has decided that an Italian demon channelled through an American boy should sound like it's from Stepney...
MULLARD
To their (genuine) credit, the score, makeup, cinematography and effects are all passable here; the problem is the ideas and writing they're all being used to prop up, and the baffling miscasting used to deliver it all. The Pope's Exorcist is the Sony execs wanting to play in the fetid sandpit of Blumhouse for easy money, and coming back with just as much dogshit under their fingernails as a result.
This is every low-rent exorcism film you've ever seen, except now the film crew have managed to wangle a jolly to Ireland into the bargain. I'd not necessarily expected the movie to be a better effort than its classmates, but it's so happy to steal wholesale from them that it's an insult to an already-struggling genre.
In the end and after the batshit finale, we don't even see the family that all this has happened to. The survivors of an actual otherworldly intervention are written out with a 'yeah they're all recovered now they've gone away, they're probably fine and with no post-traumatic stress disorder lol' because The Pope's Exorcist is too busy going all Da Vinci Code and optimistically setting up a sequel/franchise.
This film should never have seen the light of day, but to unleash another on humanity would be truly demonic...
*1 If someone as holy and divinely protected as The Pope needs his own exorcist, what hope do the rest of us have? It's a wonder there's anything left outside the walls of The Vatican... [ BACK ]
*2 The Pope's not even really in this, by the way. Just some cardinal bloke that Russel Crowe reports to. But the film's not called "The Cardinal's Exorcist", is it? No, because they wanted a more eye-catching title. And having watched the film, what on earth has The Pope done to get implicated in all this? Actually, don't answer that...[ BACK ]
*3 The story opens in 1987 with a newly-single mother driving to an idyllic retreat to start a new life, with two complaining kids in-tow and a soundtrack of 80s rock bangers. This transparent and unearned fanboy wink to The Lost Boys might be the most insulting thing about a movie which is the diametric opposite of fun... [ BACK ]
*4 The majority of which is even subtitled! By which I mean yes, there are lines and exchanges in this film which are delivered in Italian and which have no subs for an English-speaking audience. And that's not for dramatic concealment or comic effect, someone just that forgot to put them in there. Ottimo lavoro, ragazzi... [ BACK ]
*5 By my own admission I do not know any world-weary Italian clerics. But please be aware that my day-job brings me into regular contact with several Polish welders, so I'm confident on this one. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
No comments:
Post a Comment