He has been called to perform an exorcism. ‘What’s the sign of possession?’ he asks an acquaintance of the ‘possessed’ young man. ‘He speaks in English,’ comes the answer. (This is in Italy, so a local is not expected to be conversant in English – if he starts to spout fluent English, it figures he is ‘possessed’.)
‘Is there a TV in the house?’ the exorcist asks. There is, he is told. His eyes glint mischievously. A little later he starts the ritual. Engaging the possessed in some banter – unlike most exorcism rituals I have seen in countless horror films – he challenges the devil: ‘Can you possess me?’ ‘I can possess anything, anyone,’ the malevolent spirit says. Promptly, the exorcist calls for the fattened pig he had seen on the way in to be fetched. Lo and behold! The next thing we know, the ‘spirit’ has left the body of the man and entered the pig! The devil has been tricked.
As the man performing the ‘exorcism’ tells a committee hearing, he does not see most of his engagements as exorcisms. He calls them suggestive psychology. What such troubled minds need, he underlines, is not exorcism, but a little conversation, a little understanding, a little theatre.
He is Father Gabriele Amorth, chief exorcist for the Diocese of Rome, the Vatican’s official ghostbuster, exorcist to the pope. It’s a playfully goofy sequence played with knowing aplomb by Russell Crowe, accent and all.
Father Amorth is unlike any other exorcist you might have come across in a film. He carries a whisky flask in his habit and is wont to taking a swig or two every now and then, to address his bad throat, as he puts it. He has a pun or a witticism for every occasion. In the middle of his most challenging exorcism (that forms the bulk of the narrative of the film), when the devil, possessing a young boy, says, ‘My name is blasphemy. My name is nightmare,’ pat comes Father Amorth’s response, ‘My nightmare is France winning the World Cup’.
Prepping his younger partner in the ritual, Father Esquibel (Daniel Zavatto), he asks whether the latter knows any jokes, because it seems like the devil does not have a sense of humour. Father Amorth has a lot of that – and gallows humour to boot. As Father Esquibel almost has his ear bitten off during the ritual, Father Amorth has this to say: ‘You don’t get to remain handsome in this business.’
Rarely does a horror film make you smile as much as this one
As long as the film maintains this levity, it makes for enjoyable viewing. I have seldom smiled as much in a horror film. Which kind of defeats the point of a film in the genre, if you come to think of it. But then I was never sure if the film’s star, Crowe, and its director, Julius Avery, are stringing us all along. How else can you explain such campy cringing dialogues in a film this high profile: ‘It’s a powerful demon’, ‘We are getting closer to hell’, ‘A mother’s love never fails’, ‘The construction work (at the abbey) freed the demon’.
Of course the film is based on the ‘real-life’ exploits of Father Amorth as gleaned from his countless articles and books (Amorth even tells Esquibel, ‘You must read the books, they are good’). But it is hard to take at face value the exploits of a man who when asked if Satan will ever attack the Vatican, said, ‘He [Satan] has tried already. He did it in 1981 by attacking John Paul II by working with those who armed Ali Ağca’ (the Turkish assassin who shot at and wounded the pope). Or whose exorcism count went up from about 70,000 in 2010 to 160,000 in 2013. It is just as well that the filmmakers decide to pack in all the horrors that an exorcist might come across into the story of a single case.
The devil is neither scary nor very involving
Every time the film loses its protagonist’s tongue-in-cheek tone, it loses the plot. Most demonstrably in underlining the various traumas that plague Father Amorth (his past as a World War II veteran or his failure to rescue a girl who had sought his help). Or for that matter his partner’s guilt of having been sexually involved with a member of his congregation.
Also hampering its fear quotient is a segment where the men of faith discover the unholy history of the abbey where they are at work. Even as Father Amorth keeps underlining that the boy does not have much time and they need to act fast, they keep on yakking away some mumbo-jumbo about the Spanish Inquisition and the Vatican Seal and how all the atrocities and persecution unleashed by the church in the last 500 years were the work of the Satan.
The director throws everything but the kitchen sink in the final segment (in a post-Marvel Studios world, the devil too has the advantage of a huge special effects budget), but it is neither scary nor very involving. I am not sure if that is because in a post-Conjuring, post-Insidious world, and where OTT platforms overflow with horror, there’s no novelty left in the genre tropes on display here (Get Out and A Quiet Place work because they go a different route altogether).
Russell Crowe helps overcome the underwhelming horror quotient
In the end what you are left with is Russell Crowe. His obvious delight in chewing the scenery is often infectious and helps overcome the underwhelming horror quotient. And if you are so inclined, there’s Franco Nero (those of a certain generation will remember him as the avenging cowboy Django in the cult film of the same name) as the pope, albeit a bearded one (a novelty that, since there have been no bearded popes since 1700).
Sometime during the time Father Amorth and Padre Esquibel discover the history of San Sebastian Abbey, they also learn that there are 200 such grounds all over the world that Satan has taken over and where God does not exist anymore. As the pope fetes the two for their success in liberating one, they look at each other meaningfully and say something to the effect of there being 199 left. If that’s the filmmakers trying to indicate sequels, I sure hope they go the full camp way. The post-end credit sequence has a slide mentioning, apropos Father Amorth’s works, ‘His books are good.’ I am sure they are. If they are half as campy as the best parts of the film is. Camp is good.
Truth is stranger than fiction, we are told. Not on the evidence of The Pope’s Exorcist, though. William Friedkin’s exorcist, 50 years ago, remains unchallenged.
(Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri is a film and music buff, editor, publisher, film critic and writer)
