Welcome back to the blog readers. I recently saw the new supernatural horror film The Pope's Exorcist, and I wanted to share my thoughts. The film was directed by Julius Avery and written by Michael Petroni and Evan Spiliotopoulos, based on the books An Exorcist Tells His Story and An Exorcist: More Stories by Gabriele Amorth. The film stars Russell Crowe as Amorth, costars Daniel Zovatto, Alex Essoe, and Franco Nero, and sees Amorth meet his match as he attempts to exorcise a demon from a young boy in Spain.
I was absolutely hesitant about seeing this film because as you already know, 2022 was a horrible year for horror films, with all but three on my worst films of the year list. Those three? The Black Phone, Scream (if you consider it horror), and Smile. Although we did get to a stable start to open the year with M3GAN (which I don't consider to be a horror) and Scream VI (which I also don't consider to be horror). So how did the first outright horror film of 2023 fare?
I will admit that I did quite like this film...as a comedy. Did you get the joke yet? No? Well the punchline is that this film is awful. Terrible line delivery that made me laugh more than cringe, a by-the-numbers plot that has more twists than a pretzel, unnecessary religious propaganda, and terrible acting make for a pretty hilarious film. Maybe this one should have been a satire like Scream and it would have worked for me. Instead we get this.
Off the bat, Russell Crowe does not belong anywhere near this film. I did not buy into his Italian accent one bit, and it honestly comes off as a mix between his own and a bad Latin. It is unsettling and does nothing to allow the viewer to invest into his character. In terms of his performance, I believe that he overacted here. There was no need for him to say some of the things he said and do some of the things he did.
The rest of the acting is just bland to me. Peter DeSouza-Feighoney plays the young boy who gets possessed and some of his body movements and expressions honestly made me laugh. I know again that I was not supposed to but I couldn't help it. I don't know what the director told this young kid to do but he did it and then some. Another case of overacting for the sake of a reaction. And no, I am not ribbing on the kid at all. I think I can make the connection that he was asked to do a job and he did it. I don't like how he was told to do his job, but that's not a gripe on him. It's more on the director.
Everyone else was just forgettable though. Alex Essoe plays the mother, Laurel Marsden plays the daughter, and Franco Nero plays the Pope. The only thing I would say is that Essoe plays her character the most realistically. Marsden's character comes off as annoying and unlikable and Franco Nero plays an overly excitable Pope. One thing he did in particular legitimately made me belly laugh. I am not kidding you, he is laying in a hospital bed and when something happens he jumps out of the bed with the beadiest eyes I have ever seen and says the most hilarious thing ever.
I mentioned that there were more twists than a pretzel, and I meant it. This film was basically twist after twist after twist until it got too mind-numbing. I eventually got what was going on but the film doesn't even help you out with all of these twists. And then when the big reveal actually happens, I was left scratching my head. What in the hell did we just witness? And it's not like the big reveal is anything earth-shattering in the horror world. It is a swing and a huge, huge miss for the film.
And then we get to the fun part: the religious propaganda. If you are not Christian/Catholic, you will get nothing out of this film. Because the message of the film basically is that faith in God is the only defense against all kinds of evil. Which is complete bullshit in my eyes. I won't go on a whole tirade about how religion is worthless and completely cultist, but I will say that these films do not need to exist. But they do and they have their audience, and it clearly is not me.
Yeah, I have no idea how much more I can write because of how poor the film is. So I guess to conclude my thoughts, The Pope's Exorcist is a rehashing of all the bad horror films of 2022 with a lot more unintentional laughs than I can remember having. Thank you all so much for reading this post and I will see you later this week for my review of the season finale of The Mandalorian.
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