The Pope’s Exorcist (2023)

1987. Gabriele Amorth (Russell Crowe), the Vatican’s very own exorcist, is in some troubles with church politics. A young career cardinal has made himself the speaker of people who find the whole exorcism thing rather problematic in the modern world, and tries to push Amorth out of office, making a pretty grumpy – when he’s not winking at nuns - old man even grumpier. The Pope (Franco Nero, logically cast as the Polish pope in a movie where Russell Crowe is supposed to be Italian) is on our rebel establishment hero’s side, though, so it’s clear right from the start of the movie that nothing will come out of this for Amorth. Why the sub plot is in the movie anyway, only god or the pope will know.

Anyway, once that business is pushed aside, the Pope sends Amorth to Spain. There, an American widow (Alex Essoe, again wasted in a plot point role, alas) and her teenage kids (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney and Laurel Marsden) have moved into an old abbey her husband has mysteriously bequeathed to her, and are soon in rather dire possession troubles. The abbey, it appears, harbours a particularly dark secret, that will need all of Amorth’s experience to uncover. Things are so dangerous, even the Pope will be affected.

As regular readers of my diatribes and vague ideas here will know, I’m not much of a fan of Western possession horror; I don’t even like The Exorcist. There’s just something about the sub-genre as it is practiced in American and British movies that sticks in my atheist craw, even though I’m usually perfectly capable of appreciating religious art and sometimes even thought. All too often, I find this sort of affair comical rather than horrific, even when it is not sprinkled with problematic moralizing like the Conjuring films (which to me stand in the direct tradition of things like The Exorcist).

Julius Avery’s The Pope’s Exorcist certainly is not the exorcism movie to convert me – or anyone else for that matter – to exorcism movies as a serious or effective horror sub-genre (I hope), but I found myself having one hell of a time with it. Though, it has to be said, probably not for the reasons the filmmakers wanted.

It is clear from the very start that this is a Very Serious Movie that goes for an overblown, turned up to Eleven tone, Big Dramatic Flashbacks, and Deep Dark Secrets (capitalization probably in the script this way) – it really is pompous as all that. What makes the film so amusing is that this pomposity is in the service of a story that may start as a drab, overly plotted exorcism-by-the-numbers tale but increasingly drifts off into the realm of extremely pulpy nonsense with gates to hell in abbey cellars, possession double play and blood-puking popes which rub against the self-serious nature of the storytelling in ways that can’t help but be incredibly entertaining. The film’s final act gets absolutely bonkers with this stuff in a way that I’d call absolutely gleeful, if the film’s general air didn’t suggest it’s simply not intelligent enough to actually be this way on purpose. Which does not make it any less entertaining, of course.

Watching an over-emoting, unkindly aged Russell Crowe with a terrible Italian accent throw himself into this nonsense with the full force of his old star personality is pretty great, as well; I’m not quite sure he’s buying into the absurdity or does mean his performance seriously, but I do salute his effort to make (weird) decisions and go with whatever is thrown at him; mostly it’s blood, as a matter of fact.

The Pope’s Exorcist gets special bonus points for an ending that desperately wants to open up the possibility of a Pope’s-Exorcistiverse, with potentially 199 other films. Personally, I hope for The Pope’s Exorcist vs Sadako next.