I’ve seen The Pope’s Exorcist twice now and had two completely different experiences. The first time, I went in expecting a movie that was more along the lines of William Friedkin or Scott Derrickson. I thought I was going to get some serious horror. Russell Crowe is, after all, playing a character that’s based on the real, actual, honest-to-God, Father Gabriele Amorth, who served as Chief Exorcist at the Vatican for three decades. He’s claimed to have performed thousands of exorcisms, he’s written many, many books (the books are good), and he’s had proper adventures. Knowing that, and judging the movie by its marketing (there’s a lot of material our there that doubles down on how all of this is based on a “real person”), I figured that it would be a sort of biopic with some Hollywoodization thrown in to spice things up. It wasn’t. And I left feeling somewhat disappointed.
It was only on my second viewing that I understood what director Julius Avery was trying to do. This wasn’t The Exorcist. It wasn’t trying to be. (More on this later!) This is a comic book origin story, with Father Amorth as a demon hunting superhero and Father Esquibel as his sidekick in training. This is a franchise starter that’s cut from the same cloth as The Conjuring, that uses a real person as a point of inspiration for something a lot more fantastical.
There is the setting up of Father Amorth as a loyalist who thumbs his nose at the “new ways” of the Church. The introduction of Father Esquibel as a flawed but faithful servant of God. What is Cornell John’s Bishop Lumumba if not Father Amorth’s “handler.” There’s also a Dan Brown-esque Vatican conspiracy. As well as some pretty intense world building and myth making around the church and its eternal battle against the Devil.
It was all right there and I should have seen it. Unfortunately, the baggage that was my misplaced expectations cheated me of that experience the first time I saw it. Needless to say I enjoyed it a lot more the second time.
There Is No God Here
The movie is built around a somewhat traditional narrative involving Julia, a single mother, and her two children, Amy and Henry, who find themselves in possession of a broken down abbey in Spain. The place has all the credentials of a haunted house, and things start to turn when a centuries old evil is inadvertently unleashed and takes possession of Henry. It’s a relatively straightforward setup that is used primarily to showcase Father Amorth and his abilities.
Julia, Amy, and Henry may be the unfortunate victims of this haunting, but they are also completely unimportant to what this movie is trying to do. They aren’t quite characters but rather horror checkpoints that have been put in place to give audiences a good origin story.
Russell Crowe remains an incredible screen presence and the perfect choice of actor to portray the complex and subversive Father Gabriele Amorth. He leans into the real Father Amorth’s offbeat sense of humour. He sports what can best be described as a full-bodied Italian accent. He successfully modulates his voice in a way to provide comfort to those who need it and be incredibly aggravating to the demon he is attempting to exorcise.
A Pervasive Sense of Dread
Now I should note that The Pope’s Exorcist isn’t in any way shit-your-pants scary. There is instead an atmosphere of persistent dread and creepiness that better fits the overall tone of the movie.
With The Exorcist, William Friedkin already introduced us to what evil could be and how it would manifest itself. He understood that make up and special effects only provide superficial scares and that real horror lies in the fact that the Devil, like God, is also everywhere all at once.
Julius Avery knows that he doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, he utilizes Friedkin’s pioneering cinematic language in order to win over the audience and get them invested in a new protagonist. What follows may feel a little derivative, even tropey, but it is nevertheless a very cunning way to build something from the ground up. What is The Pope’s Exorcist if not an original idea with franchise potential?
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