The Pope’s Exorcist | Little White Lies

The Pope’s Exorcist

08 Apr 2023 / Released: 07 Apr 2023

Words by Hannah Strong

Directed by Julius Avery

Starring Alex Essoe, Daniel Zovatto, and Russell Crowe

Man with a long, grey beard wearing a black robe in a dimly lit room.
Man with a long, grey beard wearing a black robe in a dimly lit room.
3

Anticipation.

Love whatever accent Crowe is attempting in the trailer.

2

Enjoyment.

Not enough demons.

2

In Retrospect.

I've had more fun at Sunday mass.

Rus­sell Crowe plays a priest charged by the Vat­i­can with dri­ving out demons in Julius Avery’s under­whelm­ing reli­gious horror.

I con­sid­er it a fail­ing of my Catholic school edu­ca­tion that I had nev­er heard of Father Gabriele Amorth until it was brought to my atten­tion Rus­sell Crowe would be play­ing him in a new film from Over­lord direc­tor Julius Avery. Con­sid­er­ing how dif­fi­cult my teach­ers often found it to engage a group of chil­dren on the top­ic of reli­gious doc­trine, they might have con­sid­ered bring­ing the prospect of demons and exor­cisms into play. It cer­tain­ly would have been a les­son I would have paid atten­tion to. 

Where the local dio­cese failed to deliv­er, The Pope’s Exor­cist steps in, with Rus­sell Crowe tak­ing the tit­u­lar role, as an Ital­ian priest in 1987 work­ing under the author­i­ty of the Vat­i­can to inves­ti­gate alleged demon­ic pos­ses­sions. 98% of such instances are linked to men­tal ill­ness, we’re told, but the remain­ing 2% are the result of some­thing more nefar­i­ous: Pure evil”. 

Amorth’s first task with­in the film involved a pos­ses­sion in Tro­pea. After a bit of ban­ter with the afflict­ed, he goads the demon’ into pos­sess­ing a local pig. The unfor­tu­nate pig is then blast­ed with a shot­gun; an effi­cient, although unortho­dox, approach to epis­co­pal duties. The ami­able Amorth – who too­tles around on a red Fer­rari ves­per and sports a fetch­ing pair of red tint­ed shades — is rather unpop­u­lar among the car­di­nals, who see his appoint­ment as unse­ri­ous and out­dat­ed. You have a prob­lem with me, you talk to my boss,” Amorth booms in response (mean­ing the Pope, not God, which would have been a wit­ti­er reposte). 

The Pope — John Paul II — is quite fond of his exor­cist. The two share a belief that evil is very much a real spir­i­tu­al force, rather than, say, a thing peo­ple do to one anoth­er. This seems like an awful­ly con­ve­nient stance for the Catholic church to take, but either way, the Pope shields Amorth from the car­di­nals who would have him retire, and dis­patch­es him to Spain, where an Amer­i­can fam­i­ly who recent­ly emi­grat­ed to ren­o­vate an old abbey are being trou­bled by a malev­o­lent force. 

Dark, moody indoor scene with a woman sitting on a bed surrounded by hooded figures.

The evil that Amorth faces is a demon that has pos­sessed one of the two chil­dren in the house. He demands Bring me the priest” in a dis­tort­ed British snarl (pro­vid­ed by Ralph Ine­son) and does oth­er demon‑y things, like carv­ing words into the boy’s stom­ach and mak­ing cru­ci­fix­es fall off the wall – though rem­i­nis­cent of Rai­mi Dea­dites, there’s less to chew on, lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly, under Avery’s watch.

A papal pro­ce­dur­al fol­lows, as Amorth attempts to find a way to rid the fam­i­ly of their demon while the Pope, back in Rome, inves­ti­gates the abbey’s his­to­ry. The demon is quite can­did about his inten­tions: he wish­es to pos­sess the Pope’s exor­cist in order to infil­trate the Vat­i­can and cause hav­oc — as was pre­vi­ous­ly the case in an inci­dent the church cov­ered up. While it briefly seems as though this top­i­cal thread might become a com­men­tary on that which organ­ised ulti­mate­ly amounts to very lit­tle, and the film remains unam­bi­tious in its depic­tion of possession.

Crowe is pleas­ing­ly game, affect­ing a ques­tion­able Ital­ian accent and bear­ing a strik­ing resem­blance to Orson Welles as he cuts about on his scoot­er, and Amorth – who was the sub­ject of a 2017 doc­u­men­tary by William Fried­kin – is undoubt­ed­ly a fas­ci­nat­ing char­ac­ter wor­thy of a schlocky B‑movie out­ing. But the stilt­ed script takes a long time to deliv­er on its scin­til­lat­ing premise, and Avery can’t seem to strike a bal­ance between the absurd and the dis­turb­ing, with the elab­o­rate cli­max com­ing too late to real­ly have an impact. Although the end­ing seems to sug­gest a sequel, where Amorth and his new side­kick Father Esquibel hunt down more demons, any fol­low-up should aim to ful­ly com­mit to the absur­di­ty, or lean more heav­i­ly into the The Exor­cist homage – else risk repeat­ing this film’s under­whelm­ing execution.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.

You might like