Watched the USA's 2023 The Pope's Exorcist (1:43:05), based on the 1990 book An Exorcist Tells His Story and the 1992 book An Exorcist: More Stories by Gabriele Amorth. This is, perhaps, the most intelligent movie on exorcism I have seen so far, except for three things: like all other movies on exorcism it is directed like the 1960s Horror of Dracula, it is yet another Blatty sequel, and it is no acting vehicle for anyone in the cast.
July 1987. American Julia Vasquez has inherited San Sebastian Abbey in Castile, Spain from her Spanish husband, who died in a car accident. Having no more means of income, she moves to the abbey with her reluctant children, Amy and Henry, with the intention of having it repaired and eventually sold. Construction comes to a halt, however, when one of the men figures in a gas leak explosion in one of the underground chambers, and the crew walks out on Julia. It is later revealed that the chambers contain the 1475 corpses of victims of the Spanish Inquisition, and that the chief inquisitor, Friar de Ojada, initiated the Inquisition as actually prompted by Asmodeus, the king of hell. Very soon the young boy Henry is possessed by Asmodeus, and the Pope, who knows about the mysterious background of the abbey, sends Amorth all the way from Italy to perform an exorcism. The storytelling then proceeds like an underwater, detective investigation of a sunken galleon beneath a sunken battleship.
The movie is interesting enough, with some good special effects, except that it seems to have been preempted by the Amityille Horror series (pig images, house built on top of an Indian burial ground and torture chamber). It is also dismaying that exorcists seem to rely on routine prayers and props like items out of a vampire's kit--while the Devil himself is consistently as witty, as spontaneous, and as creative as a stand-up comedian. Watching the movie is like watching The Incredible Hulk: one patiently follows the story while waiting for the entertaining yet intermittent hulk-out sequences to happen. It also doesn't help that Henry, when possessed, looks like a young, Halloween version of Mick Jagger.
What I love about this movie, though, is its irreverence toward the rite of exorcism itself, almost as though it were really an anti-exorcism movie. The Confession scenes verged on being hilarious expositions, illustrating that life is hopelessly Freudian.
Yes, the Devil does exist, but the message of possession that comes across is that, without the Devil, we would have no need of God--and vice-versa.
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