While I am an avid fan of action, science fiction, and thriller movies – my other favorite genre is horror.
It’s been a while since I saw Russell Crowe headlining a movie that I actually wanted to catch and “The Pope’s Exorcist’ happens to be that film.
The trailer peddled a standard run-of-the-mill exorcism flick leaning heavily on real-life Vatican exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth played by Crowe.
Crowe embraces Amorth’s role and even made his addition – giving Amorth a scooter to ride to his various appointments.
The Pope’s Exorcist is a supernatural horror film directed by Julius Avery from a screenplay by Michael Petroni and Evan Spiliotopoulos, based on the 1990 book “An Exorcist Tells His Story” and 1992’s book “An Exorcist: More Stories” by Father Gabriele Amorth.
The film stars Crowe as Amorth, with Daniel Zovatto, Peter Feighoney, Alex Essoe, Cornell John, Ryan O’Grady, Laurel Marsden, and Franco Nero in supporting roles.
Clocking in at 103 minutes long, the film is rated R for violent content, language, sexual references, and some nudity.
Opening in 1987, Amorth, the Pope’s personal exorcist, is an earthy, humorous, and mostly practical man that visits an Italian village where a man is seemingly possessed by a demon.
With the local priest, Amorth enters the room where the man is tied up.
While exorcising him, using a Saint Benedict Medal sacramental, Amorth drives the demon into a pig, which is then killed with a shotgun.
This incident gets Amorth in trouble with a church tribunal since he acted without permission from church superiors.
One tribunal member is a friendly African bishop Lumumba (John), but another is the vicious American cardinal Sullivan (O’Grady) – who is skeptical of demonic possession.
Amorth replies that evil does exist and that he did not perform a true exorcism, but rather, some psychological theater to help the mentally disturbed man.
Disgusted with the way the meeting is going, Amorth walks out of the tribunal.
The Pope (Nero) then assigns him to visit a possessed boy named Henry (Feighoney) in Spain.
Henry along with his mother Julia (Essoe) and his rebellious teenage sister Amy (Marsden) had traveled from America to take possession of a mysterious old Spanish abbey.
The abbey was Henry’s father’s sole bequest to his family after he died in a car accident in which Henry was also present.
The traumatized Henry has not spoken since the accident for about a year.
Henry soon starts behaving bizarrely and Julia gets him tested for every possible illness available, but, serum chemistry panels and MRI show nothing physically abnormal.
The possessed requests a priest; the local Father Esquibel (Zovatto) arrives, but Henry obscenely derides him.
Amorth arrives and enlists Esquibel as an assistant, though Esquibel is untrained as an exorcist.
Overall, there are more layers to this storyline than I was expecting and the atmospheric creepiness of the abbey only added to the possible scary moments for the audience.
Since they’re already working on a sequel featuring Crowe reprising his role as Amorth, it’s worth getting the best experience in front of a big screen for this origin film.
