The Pope's Exorcist is a Very Silly Movie
Regrettably, I don’t do a whole lot of freelancing. I used to write regularly for Fatherly, a website that paid me money for my work (I loved that part!), but they recently went out of business like seemingly everyone else.
Around that time, I was approached by a site called Wealth of Geeks. I’ve written five essays for them so far and really should be better about promoting my pieces there because they’re quite good.
I was recently assigned an essay about the surprisingly hopeful, optimistic nature of the exorcist subgenre from Wealth of Geeks. In order to do a good job I figured that I should see as many movies for it as possible.
I was going to finally get around to seeing 1990’s The Exorcist III, which has the distinction of being the only Exorcist sequel or prequel that wasn’t a SPECTACULAR, historic failure.
It’s uncanny how much Russell Crowe doesn’t look like the real person he’s portraying.
Think about it: The Exorcist II was legendarily one of the most notorious cinematic fiascos of the 1970s. Paul Schrader’s Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist was considered such a stinker by its studio that they hired Renny Harlin to direct a whole new version.
Schrader’s version is considered preferable, but they’re both radioactive bombs that only add to the sense that The Exorcism is a cursed franchise.
Universal and Blumhouse nevertheless ponied up somewhere between four hundred and six hundred million dollars for the worldwide rights for a trilogy built around The Exorcist.
The first and possibly last entry in the franchise, 2023’s The Exorcist: Believer, was just as poorly received as the prequels and sequels that preceded it.
I was going to watch The First Omen, The Exorcist III, Immaculate, and The Pope’s Exorcist, but ultimately, I only had time to watch Immaculate and The Pope’s Exorcist.
Because I do not believe in wasting a cinematic experience, I figured that I would write about The Pope’s Exorcist for this website.
The Pope’s Exorcist was actually one of two options in a poll over at my Substack newsletter, Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas. I was rooting for it because, c’mon, it’s called The Pope’s Exorcist and stars Russell Crowe.
How could people NOT vote for The Pope’s Exorcist? It’s got everything: the pope, an exorcist, an exorcist who works for the Pope and Russell Crowe
In The Pope’s Exorcist, Crowe plays Father Gabriele Amorth, a real-life exorcist who professes to have performed tens of thousands of exorcisms. There is a word for people like that: liars.
He reminds me of Frank Dux, the serial fantasist whose wild fibbing inspired Bloodsport. Dux and Amorth embody the maxim that anything is possible if you lie.
Father Amorth is not your daddy’s exorcist. He’s very specifically the Pope’s exorcist. Hence the title. This Father is no meek bible-thumping Jesus lover. He’s an exorcist with attitude.
This is an exorcist who fucks. Well, no, not really on account of the whole celibacy thing, but he is an exorcist who drives a moped and is continually stealing gulps of whiskey from the flask he carries everywhere. Also, I’m guessing he has a monster hog. He’s packing, and I’m not talking about firearms. What I’m saying is that this exorcist obviously has a massive dong. It’s never explicitly spelt out in the movie but it’s evident all the same.
Father Amorth’s methods are so unconventional that you half expect a pissed-off Pope to tell him that he’s finally gone too far and demand his crucifix and holy water.
In classic mismatched buddy cop tradition, this weary old veteran who has seen it all is partnered with a younger, more skittish rookie with secrets and sins of his own. The formidable Father’s sidekick is Father Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto), a green young priest who does not have much experience with exorcisms.
Our hero, on the other hand, has seemingly more exorcism experience than anyone on Earth. When it comes to battling Satan, it’s God, Jesus, and, as the new, badass last part of the holy trinity, Father Amorth.
The pope dispatches Father Amorth and Father Esquibel to Spain, where an American boy on vacation is possessed by the devil.
The big problem with every exorcist movie post-The Exorcist is that William Friedkin’s smash is so iconic, ubiquitous, and well-known that it’s almost impossible for a “scary” demon speaking through the voice of an innocent child overflowing with blasphemy and profanity to be scary rather than funny.
It’s a testament to what a brilliant, intense, and uncompromising filmmaker William Friedkin was that he was able to alchemize so many kitschy, campy, outrageous elements into something that wasn’t just scary: it was fucking terrifying.
The Pope’s Exorcist is not terrifying. It borrows its nonchalant attitude towards good and evil and heaven and hell from Crowe’s charismatic protagonist.
The primary pleasure of The Pope’s Exorcist comes from seeing a great actor lovingly indulge his inner ham. If I might lavish some mixed praise on the star of A Beautiful Mind, he truly is our contemporary answer to Oliver Reed.
The hard-drinking British character actor with the malevolent sensibility would have felt at home in The Pope’s Exorcist. It’s exactly the kind of continental trash that he gravitated toward during his career.
In a moderately intriguing development, the Fathers discover that a prominent figure involved in the Inquisition was, in fact, possessed by the devil, but the Church covered it up for the sake of its image.
The bible-thumping bros are challenged by the devil and great evil, but there’s never even a remote possibility that our boy, Father Amorth, will not end up victorious.
Father Amorth claims to be the all-time world champion of exorcisms; obviously, this was not going to be the case that ruined him.
I got exactly what I wanted from The Pope’s Exorcism. It’s chuckle-inducing Catholic kitsch featuring a fun star turn from an Academy Award-winning actor who is most assuredly in on the joke. He finds the exact right tone for this godly guilty pleasure.
Crowe obviously enjoyed making The Pope’s Exorcist. Its robust box office makes a sequel a real possibility. More excitingly, for me, at least, he will be starring in another exorcism movie in just a few months.
It’s a drama from Joshua John Miller, director of the nifty meta-horror comedy The Final Girls, and the son of Jason Miller, the younger priest from The Exorcist, that casts Crowe as an actor in an exorcism-based movie whose mind begins to unravel.
It’s a movie that I will have to write about for my upcoming book, The Fractured Mirror. Going forward, I hope that Crowe will only act in movies with Exorcism or Exorcist in the title. That would certainly be an interesting direction for his career to take.
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