The Pope’s Exorcist
Director: Julius Avery
Writer: Michael Petroni, Evan Spiliotopoulos
Based on: Gabriele Amorth‘s autobiographical books
Cast: Russell Crowe, Daniel Zovatto, Alexandra Essoe, Franco Nero, Peter DeSouza-Feighoney, Laurel Marsden, Cornell John, Ryan O’Grady
Seen on: 19.10.2023

Plot:
When Julia (Alexandra Essoe) and her two children Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) and Amy (Laurel Marsden) move into an old church in Spain, they are hoping for a fresh start. But pretty soon, inexplicable things are happening. On the advice of Father Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto), Father Gabriele Amorth (Russell Crowe) is called. Amorth is the official exorcist of the Vatican, but even he couldn’t have expected what he finds.

The Pope’s Exorcist is a middling horror movie with a larger than life performance by Russell Crowe that will probably divide audience. That is, the performance will divide, but overall it is pretty clear that the film just isn’t very good.

The Pope’s Exorcist gives an absolutely average exorcism horror film: every beat of it can be anticipated, the visuals are tried and tested and don’t stray from the usual. It feels so familiar, I actually wondered half-way through whether I hadn’t seen it before and had to check this blog to make sure I hadn’t.

Two things do stand out. One is the utter bullshit ending that tries to be clever and instead seems to absolve the entire Catholic church of any wrong-doing ever. Even in a genre that is necessarily Christian, this revelation jumps the shark, to put it mildly.

The second thing is Crowe’s performance. He hams it up, horrible Italian accent included, and I, for one, found this glorious, though it won’t work for everybody. Crowe obviously has fun with the part, and both script and director give him the necessary leeway to really go for it. But his performance is admittedly at odds with the rest of the film and can rub the wrong way. That being said, since the rest of the film is utterly dull, I’d choose Crowe’s performance any day, and would have wished the entire film to be more like it than they other way round.

That performance probably isn’t strong enough to really sit through the entirety of the film, though. Unless you really, really love exorcism movies.

Summarizing: not particularly convincing.