What is left to explore in the exorcism genre? Even Mikael Hafstrom’s The Rite can’t help but allude to The Exorcist, the undeniable king of the genre.
“What did you expect? Spinning heads? Pea soup?” Anthony Hopkins as Father Lucas asks Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue), a four year seminary student at the Vatican whose doubt of the existence of God and the Devil has him running from his pursuit of the priesthood. In his attempt to leave Michael never knew he’d end up here, in the hands of a veteran exorcist so used to the craft he’s not against answering his cell phone in the middle of a demon removal session, “I’m sorry, I’m in the middle of something.”
Such theatrics and a blase approach to exorcisms won’t help in subsiding Michael’s doubt of the Devil’s existence. Fortunately for this film’s narrative, his doubt is what fuels the movie, and it’s a doubt I can understand. Most people that question such things frequently ask for proof. They want to be shown a sign. The Rite obliges when a pregnant girl who’s been raped by her father and is exhibiting signs of possession starts spitting up bloody nails. She also begins shouting in another voice, describing instances from Michael’s past that no stranger would ever know. Proof enough right? Not for Michael… he needs pea soup, spinning heads, a ride across the ceiling and a fall down the stairs. Then we’ll talk about whether or not the Devil exists.
Among other things, I fault a lot of this film’s issues on poor editing and lazy writing. Michael Petroni’s (Queen of the Damned) script is uninventive and plodding. He stumbles around character introductions and exposition as if we’ve never heard of exorcisms, God or the Devil before. It takes half an hour to even get into the main narrative after we’ve been introduced to Michael’s issues with his father (Rutger Hauer), the loss of his mother and his plans to abandon the priesthood. Once all of that was out of the way I was praying something exciting or interesting would happen. No such luck.
Instead you could begin playing a drinking game as genre cliches begin to show their face — one sip anytime someone scratches their nails on the floor or wall; another for every crack of thunder; two drinks when someone speaks in a language other than their native tongue; and pound a beer anytime someone’s eyes roll back in their head. By the time the demon donkey showed up I was already passed out.
On an acting front, O’Donoghue is serviceable in a made-for-TV kind of way and Alice Braga plays a journalist posing as a student, a rather needless character in itself, and one indistinguishable from Braga’s previous work in films such as I Am Legend or last year’s Repo Men.
Then there’s Anthony Hopkins. I will give Tony a little bit of credit, he doesn’t shy away from this role by any means. Some may look at a film like this as something beneath an actor of Hopkins’s stature. After all, he’s a 73-year-old Oscar-winner, and yet he demands your attention even when the film he’s in isn’t all that good. Sure, he’s hardly playing anything more than Hannibal Lecter as an exorcist, but it still works.
The Rite misses the mark where it needed to hit it the most, the scare department. Outside of a cheap scare resulting from a cat jumping into the window accompanied by a loud burst of music, this film doesn’t even register a chill or a shiver. This is a far cry from Hafstrom’s far more impressive adaptation of Stephen King’s 1408.
The film is supposedly inspired by Matt Baglio’s non-fiction book, which gives this movie an “inspired by true events” label. My audience laughed at the suggestion, which may mean they too are like Michael and doubters of the Devil’s existence. One thing’s for certain, this film won’t be changing their minds.
