So. This isn’t the first horror movie I’ve seen based on exorcisms in the Catholic church. Thinking back, The Rite is one particular movie that stands out in my mind.
I haven’t read any of the writings by the real Gabriele Amorth, so I can’t really speak to how accurately this movie kept to those. Considering it’s a horror movie, though, I strongly suspect that a lot of liberties were taken with the original source material.
The opening scene of this movie was fairly stereotypical, with Gabriele carrying out what seemed to be a normal exorcism…if a little theatrical. Those theatrics made sense later on, as Gabriele was forced to explain himself in front of his peers. After all, as he put it, some people needed psychiatric help, some people needed theatrics…and a very few actually need to have an exorcism performed. And, of course, this movie is primarily about one of those cases.
The movie is a fairly stereotypical horror movie. All of the jump scares were expected and didn’t really have an effect on me. Probably the strongest part of this movie was the character of Gabriele, who was about as far from a stereotypical priest as it’s possible to get. He was sarcastic and made jokes and came up with any excuse to have a drink of whiskey. Honestly, I thought Russell Crowe did a really good job in this role. It was also really good to see the hints of Gabriele’s past…the guilt that he carried that the demon could use to get at him.
I was intrigued by the links in to the Spanish Inquisition and the history of the church, as well as the reveal of what the demon’s true motivations were…what it really wanted from Gabriele. I didn’t find Julia or Amy to be particularly strong characters and I think a trick was missed in how the demon could have played on them individually. The psychological aspects could have been done a lot better and made the movie a lot creepier.
I did enjoy the interactions between Gabriele and Esquibel. It was nice to see the friendship that formed between them through the course of the movie and that it played a part in how things ended.
On the whole, this movie was entertaining, but I felt like it was something I’d seen done before. Nothing new was really added to the genre and while the characters were interesting, I did find myself just waiting for the inevitable. I would like to see a movie that relies less on the jump scares and gore for the sake of gore, and more on the psychological aspects of horror.
Ink of Blood 