The Pope's Exorcist

The Pope's Exorcist is the most recent cliche ridden demonic possession film to be released in theatres and is receiving generally favourable reviews purely because it features a fairly decent performance from high profile actor Russel Crowe as the titular man of god. While Russel Crowe is entertaining in the movie his performance is not enough to redeem it considering how fucking terrible everything else is.

The best praise I can give this film is that it is mildly entertaining, at times for all the wrong reasons. My big issue with this film and others like it is that they have taken all the wrong lessons from watching The Exorcist. All the expected features are there, the head spinning, the physical contortions, the demon playing with the priest and spouting sexual obscenities from the mouth of the possessed child, but while in The Exorcist the horror is derived from these things happening to a family we care about, here the family drama is a poorly written afterthought.

The film speeds through introducing its leads so it can get on with being a cartoonish retread of all the aforementioned cliches, which it executes with all the finesse of a donkey trying to learn how to cycle. 

The demonic possession itself is so laughably bad, the demon has this gravelly booming voice that for some reason sounds cockney, and the dialogue for it is absolutely dreadful. It's really funny when films like this try to directly copy scenes from The Exorcist, the initial conversation between the priest and the devil is an attempt at mimicking this exact scene in its far superior ancestor.
 
But what this film doesn't understand is that the devil in the Exorcist is frightening because of how still, cold and calculating the possessed Regan is when Karras first lays eyes on her. It doesn't need to try to frighten the priest with loud bangs and screams, it sits tied to the bed, maintaining complete and utter control over the conversation, because in its own words anything further would be a "vulgar display of power", it hints at its abilities while attacking Karras psychologically. Here the demon is a joke to be laughed at.

The film has one redeeming feature and that of course is Russel Crowe who is good in everything, even when the entire film around him fails on all fronts.