“The Exorcist of the Pope”, damn it, on a scooter

Taking Russell Crowe’s character seriously to fit the real-life profile of the mythical Italian exorcist Gabriele Amorth (1925-2016), who worked for the Vatican and appears to have confronted Satan hundreds of times, would be like pretending cows fly or chickens crow. la traviata. Absolutely. The New Zealand star matches that in wearing the habit and creating a superb type to which he also adds the horny fact of riding a scooter, at his own suggestion after seeing and convinced himself that it was a very popular means of transport among the Roman clergy.

really a movie The Pope’s exorcist it benefits from the careful recording of an actor, omnipresent in the work and truly credible in his role as the scourge of Satan, here of Spanish origin and responding to the name Asmodeo for the lands of Segovia and dating back to the time of the Inquisition. That and the priceless Franco Nero in the role of the holy father are the gift of the Australian director Julius Avery, who gets lost in creepy horror films.

This artefact, cleverly marketed as based on some cases of Amorth, has a lot of crudeness, which has caused a restrained outrage in the Vatican itself and the international association that brings together those who daily see Don Lucifer and his substitutes around the world. A skillful marketing campaign that at least served to prevent the film from getting lost in the weekly confusion of premieres, in which we have returned to pre-pandemic times, although the audience still does not go to the cinemas like then.

If Crowe’s work ensures that the plot does not collapse, the set design and effects are typical of the genre, since the version of the raging devils arrived in cinemas with an already mythical The exorcist (1973), which, according to everything that appeared later, increases its formal values ​​with a realism that is not even expected here. On the contrary, the carousel of effects abuses the last half hour of the tape to insane extremes, certainly to the taste of fans of the format. Nothing we haven’t seen, true, but it’s going like a shot.

“THE POPE’S EXORCIST”

United States, Great Britain, Spain, 2023.

Director: Julius Avery.

Cast: Russell Crowe, Alex Essoe, Daniel Zovatto, Peter DeSouza-Feighoney, Franco Nero, Laurel Marsden, Cornell John, Bianca Bardoe, Ryan O’Grady, Santi Bayón, Paloma Bloyd, Alessandro Gruttadauria, River Hawkins, Jordi Collet, Carrie Munro .

Terror.

103 minutes.