In The Pope’s Exorcist, Russell Crowe gets to demonstrate once again his masterful array of accents (!) with him playing Father Gabriele Amorth, the Chief Exorcist of the Vatican. Amorth is assigned to investigates a young boy’s terrifying possession and ends up uncovering a centuries-old secret that the Vatican has tried to keep hidden.
For the most part this is a solid, nuts and bolts, mild-horror. In fact, the few surprising funny moments made more of an impact on me than the scary scenes. Crowe manages to keep his accent consistent, though I am not sure just how authentically Italian it is. To its credit, it does, albeit briefly, address the horrors that the Catholic church have inflicted, including the Spanish Inquisition and child abuse. However, it does also cop-out by stating that those horrors happened because the church was infiltrated by Satan.
The film falters towards the climax as it becomes completely reliant on tropes used in nearly all exorcism movies, such as demons cracking their bones, turning their head 360-degrees, walking-on-all-fours and scuttling-up walls. The all too neat ending implies that sequels will follow, but I am not sure that there will be much demand for it.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10