REVIEW: The Pope’s Exorcist (2023)

Movie Reviews

The Pope’s Exorcist makes me hate Thor: Love and Thunder even more. This is the Russell Crowe we love, the one who’s always the best thing about a movie, who brings gravitas and complexity, joy and pain, doubt and resolve to the characters he plays. Casting him as Zeus was a masterstroke; for Taika Waititi to have ruined it must have taken considerable skill. He is the best thing about The Pope’s Exorcist, but that isn’t meant to diminish the film; it’s pretty good, and I enjoyed it more than I typically do horror movies. It has some drawbacks, a few genre tropes that make you roll your eyes, but it’s an enjoyable tale of a holy man going to war with hell to save a little boy.

Julia (Alex Essoe), an American widow, takes her children, Amy (Laurel Marsden) and Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney), to Spain to renovate and ultimately sell an abbey belonging to her late husband. In quick time, Henry is possessed by a powerful demon, and the Vatican sends Father Gabriele Amorth (Russell Crowe), a veteran exorcist who answers directly to the Pope, to save the child.

The setup for the family and the possessed boy is basic, which is okay in this case; the point is to get Amorth to the abbey to save the child with little time wasted. The family is pretty rote as well; Julia is the harried mother trying to keep her family together after a tragedy, Amy is the smart-mouthed teenager who resents having to move, and Henry is the traumatized youngster who hasn’t spoken since watching his father die. And the actors are fine; there’s nothing wrong with any of their performances, but save Peter DeSouza-Feighoney – who must convincingly act possessed, which he does well – there isn’t much for them to do. Daniel Zovatto is good as a local priest to whom the family initially turns and who ultimately assists Amorth in the exorcism, but he’s a fairly stock character, a decent though untried priest who wrestles with the expected sin of a younger man. And Franco Nero has a small part as the Pope, who would have been Pope John Paul II at this time but is never named. Nero is a welcome presence, though he has little to do.

In other words, The Pope’s Exorcist is Russell Crowe’s show. Thankfully, he’s an expert ringmaster. Crowe’s Gabriele Amorth is a terrific character (I know he was a real man, but this is a movie), larger-than-life but three-dimensional, deadly serious about his faith and protecting the innocent but of good humor as well, often joking when others can’t bring themselves to laugh. (“The Devil hates humor.”) Amorth is not a ghost-chaser, though; he can tell the difference between a true possession and a mental breakdown or psychological episode, and to his credit, he endeavors to help everyone. What made him this way is revealed bit by bit throughout the film, and what could have been a cartoonish superhero is eminently human, a wounded man who believes in cosmic forces of good and evil but, at heart, most wants to help people. At every turn, Crowe is perfect, marrying these aspects of Amorth so well that they never feel like contradictions but multiple facets of a complicated man.

Despite his strong faith and the seriousness with which he takes demonic possession and the existence of evil, Amorth finds himself something of a rebel. A new generation of Church leaders, personified in the dismissive Cardinal Sullivan (Ryan O’Grady, who plays Sullivan as a bit too much of a caricature), is convinced that evil is an abstract, a state of mind, or some other intangible concept that does not necessitate the Devil or an exorcist to cast his minions out of a human host. There is conflict between the old ways and the new, and The Pope’s Exorcist argues that denying evil allows it to flourish. It isn’t heavy-handed with this, and it’s important to the plot, so it doesn’t devolve into a lecture; if anything, that’s the purview of Cardinal Sullivan, who comes off as the harried police captain telling the hero cop he’s a loose cannon. The movie deals with aspects of the Catholic Church’s history, including some of the darker ones, but maintains respect for it and for faith. I can imagine people of all stripes both admiring that and taking offense to it; there’s something to be said for that.

But the real action is the exorcism, of course, and The Pope’s Exorcist should please fans of the subgenre in that respect. The usual tropes are there: the old, seasoned priest teamed with a younger, inexperienced one; the possessed child saying all sorts of depraved things in a demonic voice (though nothing that quite rises to the level of the famous quote from The Exorcist); failed attempts at expelling the demon; the priests realizing that this is no ordinary possession. Those are all fine, as the film uses them and an ominous score to create drama, suspense, and a creepy atmosphere. But the annoying ones grate, like everyone doing exactly what the expert tells them not to do and jump scares that don’t work (signified by a “DONG!” in the score). For me, it works more than it doesn’t, but your mileage may vary.

Part of why it works so well is that the special effects are mostly good. For the bulk of its run time, The Pope’s Exorcist keeps things simple: rotating crucifixes, shattering glass, people being thrown through the air by demon telekinesis. Those are the creepier moments, the ones that make it seem like there is an evil presence in the abbey and the child. Some of the more elaborate effects are good, too, although I don’t want to spoil anything by saying which because they’re pretty cool. I believe CGI was used in some of these scenes, just because I don’t know how else they’d have been accomplished, but it’s so subtle and mixed with practical effects that you can’t tell. (I tend to think The Pope’s Exorcist benefited from its modest $18 million budget.) The problem comes when the movie uses CGI more heavily; then, it’s like some of the bad instances from the 90s, with water looking like a thick gray goop and similar disappointments. Like with the tropes and scares, there’s more good than bad, but there are some clunkers.

But I don’t think you should let that stop you from checking it out. The Pope’s Exorcist is a fun, creepy horror film with a strong central character, played to perfection by a magnificent actor. Though it embraces many of the genre’s tropes, for good or ill, it keeps you entertained, and Russell Crowe keeps you waiting to see what he’ll do next.