The Pope's Exorcist (2023) Dir: Julius Avery
Instagram post:
Exorcism based horror films are usually either very good or very bad, and this Julius Avery directed film looked like it was not one of the former. That said, I do tend to enjoy a supernatural horror, even if it isn't exactly a classic. At the very least, I was hoping for something watchable.
Unfortunately, I had a lot of issues with this one. For starters, it was shot poorly. What's more, the set looked painfully artificial. An effective set will make the audience believe that its a real place - at no point did I feel that way about the main location of this film. The practical effects looked fairly good though, on a positive note. Sure, some of it was excessive, but it honestly didn't look too bad.
My main problem, however, was with the writing. It wasn't scary at all - if anything, it was boring. I found the writing to be pretty terrible - it was full of lazy tropes, poor dialogue, empty characters, and messy storytelling. The film was too long, but the pacing was at least quite decent - it didn't feel as long as I thought it might.
Russell Crowe didn't phone it in like he could've with this role. It was very clearly a mediocre script, but the man delivered a professional performance regardless. He was comfortably the best actor in the film, although, it must be said, there wasn't a particularly high bar on that front.
Peter DeSouza-Feighoney didn't do a bad job as the possessed child character. Sure, it was a little one-dimensional, for the most part, but then, that has more to do with the screenplay than it does him. He didn't get many lines of dialogue, because a lot of his character's speech was done by the talented Ralph Ineson, who himself was adequate, if not exceptional.
In terms of the rest of the supporting cast, I can't say that any of the performances were particularly good. However, I'll still mention the likes of Daniel Zovatto, Alex Essoe, Laurel Marsden, and Franco Nero, albeit for the sake of listing some of the more notable cast members.
Overall, this was a pretty poor one - that much became evident very quickly. It had very few redeeming factors. I also found it admittedly quite amusing that this film teased about a hundred sequels, as if it was some sort of franchise starting blockbuster. The film is getting a sequel, due to be released in 2025, but, quite frankly, it's a shock to me, because this was terrible.
Comments