The Pope's Exorcist

Amorth By
Amorth West

The Pope's Exorcist
USA/UK/Spain 2023
Directed by Julius Avery
Columbia

Warning: Some spoilers here...

The Pope’s Exorcist is the second exorcist movie I’ve watched in a week and, like Prey For The Devil (reviewed by me here)... it’s not exactly scary. However, while it’s not as surreal or as entertainingly quirky as the former movie, it still has points of interest and is amusing enough to sustain its running time.

Based on the books of the real life Pope’s exorcist, who died in 2016, this movie is set in 1987 (I’m glad the film states that because it looked contemporary to me) and has Russell Crowe playing the title character, Father Gabriel Amorth. The film starts off with a sample of his ‘bedside manner’, so to speak, as he convinces a mentally disturbed patient who he suspects does not need exorcising (although how that notion plays when certain things are uncovered later in the film is something you might want to think about) that he has been exorcised in a ritual which is... something I’ve not quite seen done before in a movie. That I can remember, at least. Then, after a brief sojourn in Italy where Amorth ignores some political problems, The Pope sends him to Spain to perform an exorcism.

In Spain, a mother (played by Alex Essoe) and her two children have come from the USA and moved into an Abbey inherited from her late husband’s family, to oversee restoration work so they can sell it. However, something is quickly uncovered during that work and it’s not very long before the young boy is demonically possessed. Enter all the usual tropes and trappings of the genre as Father Amorth, helped by a young priest played by Daniel Zovatto (who was The Prophet in Station Eleven, reviewed by me here), takes on the powerful demon inside the boy. As they do this, Amorth uncovers a buried conspiracy executed by the Roman Catholic religion dating back to the days of the Spanish inquisition (which also, kind of, absolves the modern arm of any responsibility of the atrocities of that time but, yeah, that’s just a good advert for the church, as far as I can see).

Okay, so it’s not a terrible movie but it does cover a lot of the same ground as other exorcist movies, to be sure. I was thinking about this subgenre of film as I slept on this overnight and, it seems to me that of all the niches in the horror genre... for instance vampires, werewolves and to a certain extent mummy movies... exorcism films tend to stick more to the rites and rituals the genre has always been known for without exploring new angles. So you can’t blame these movies, in a way, for being so predictable.

That being said, there are some new things here... such as a scene with a pig early on in the movie. And a whole sequence where Russell Crowe does an Indiana Jones act in walled up and hidden parts of the Abbey, where he both discovers the reason why he’s been lured onto this particular job but, also finds the information he needs to be able to defeat the demon. Kind of... there are definitive shades of the ending of Prey For The Devil (not to mention The Exorcist) in the ending to this movie too... so yeah, it does cover very familiar territory for fans of this subgenre.

But there are things which will keep you watching. One is the beautiful cinematography, where the camera movement responds fluidly to the physical arc of the characters in the frame, often aligning things to the centre of the shot. And flashbacks to Amorth’s sins as a resistance fighter in the second World War is another element to the story which has interest, giving the character an emotional depth which the demon is intent of using against him. And... well... another good thing about the movie is Russell Crowe himself. Surprisingly.

I say surprisingly because I’m not the biggest fan of Crowe, to be honest. I acknowledge he’s got a big physical. almost brutish presence in front of the camera but, I have to say, his somewhat eccentric performance of Father Amorth here is pretty likeable and the actor does it very well. He pretty much carries the movie with his personality, I would say so, yeah, you have to admire him for that.

And if you’ve got a big, brutish actor who chews up the scenery... who the heck do you get to play The Pope to balance that physical presence? Ha! None other than Django himself! That’s right, the great Franco Nero plays The Pope here and somehow makes it seem natural. They should put these two tough guys in a bloody cop thriller together, I reckon.

And that’s me done with The Pope’s Exorcist. Not the best exorcism film I’ve seen this month but very watchable and certainly it would count as another future ‘comfort horror’ movie, when it comes out on Blu Ray. If you are into these kinds of movies and can forgive it the amount of clichés which seem to me to be a constant weakness of the subgenre, then you should definitely give this one a watch. It’s certainly an entertaining picture.