THE POPE'S EXORCIST - Mark Reviews Movies

The Pope's Exorcist, Sony Pictures Releasing

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 14, 2023

Whoever the real Fr. Gabriel Amorth may have been and whatever the priest might have done, The Pope's Exorcist makes his fictionalized persona into quite the character. The choice, thanks in significant part to the casting of Russell Crowe, helps quite a bit when it comes to this movie, which is pure formula but played with a few winks toward just how clichéd, silly, and shallow the material is. The screenplay, written by Michael Petroni and Evan Spiliotopoulos, knows exactly what we expect from this kind of movie, does a fairly decent job of giving us exactly that, and, unfortunately, doesn't exactly dive into enough of what could have set this particular tale apart from every other predictable, forgettable example of this horror subgenre.

The selling point is the main character, presented, as advertised, as the exorcist of the Catholic diocese of Rome—namely the Vatican and, hence, one of the few people who can tell a group of people to take their complaints up with his boss and refer to the Pope. That scene is actually in this movie, which should give one an idea that the screenwriters and director Julius Avery have a sense of humor about the premise.

Crowe provides the rest of it, as a priest who greets and departs from assorted folks by offering up the sound of a cuckoo, who instructs a younger priest to learn a few jokes if he ever hopes to do spiritual combat with demons ("The Devil hates jokes," Gabriel notes), and who rushes through a confession after he realizes it might take too long to get through several months' worth of sins. The actor may not be the movie star he was at the height of his fame, but Crowe approaches this role, which easily could allow an actor to coast on the gimmick of the character's title or play it to some melodramatic extreme, with a fine balance of conviction and easy charm.

The story here inevitably establishes the notion that this character could figure into an entire series of movies (This one is based—loosely, one supposes—on two of Amorth's books, the titles of both of those suggesting a slew of supposedly supernatural tales that aren't addressed here). If that should happen, Crowe's the right actor to continue the job, and maybe another team of filmmakers—or the same ones for this movie, with a bit of freedom to be more playful and daring—could take advantage of the unexpected elements of this character, compared to the severe sort who typically accompany this kind of material.

Instead, though, this movie only teases us with some of that amused tone and those clever ideas. The plot, following a prologue in which Gabriel uses a rather bloody exorcism ritual as a psychological trick for someone who is only convinced of being possessed by a demon, is very much the usual stuff. An American family—widowed mother Julia (Alex Essoe) and her two children, elder daughter Amy (Laurel Marsden) and younger son Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney)—have come to an abandoned abbey in rural Spain.

It's the only thing they've inherited from the late husband/father, and Henry ends up finding a hole in a wall that results in him being possessed by a powerful demon. After local priest Fr. Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto) fails to help the boy, Gabriel is sent by the Pope himself, played by Franco Nero, to investigate. This abbey, the Pope says with an air of dread, has caused the Church some problems in the past.

Even with a passing knowledge of such stories, one can probably figure out exactly where this is heading. The possessed Henry has seizures, begins to develop nasty skin conditions (including the inconvenience of an invisible hand carving blasphemy into his flesh), talks in a deeper and raspy voice, and begins manipulating objects and people in sinister ways.

There's something, though, to admire about Gabriel's general skepticism, since he's convinced the overwhelming majority of such cases have nothing to do with actual demons, as well as a degree of certainty in his own faith that he questions the thinking and condemns the overt abuses of the institution he represents. A major part of the back story here involves the history of the abbey and the Church during a dark period, and just as the character is more intriguing for having a sense of humor, his role as a sort of theological detective has some promise, too.

Mostly, though, all of this is building toward the usual climactic battle between the forces of good—a bit more complex in regards to their pasts in this case—and a demon that becomes increasingly powerful, just when the movie requires an over-the-top third act. Avery gives us plenty of loud noises, shouted prayers, flickering lights, and contorted limbs. While there's a bit of self-aware style and theatrics to the ensuing sequences (e.g., the pontiff violently vomiting viscera), whatever sense of personality this tale and its lead character might have displayed until then is shoved aside for the spectacle. Ultimately, too much of The Pope's Exorcist amounts to the same-old.

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