Film Review — The Pope’s Exorcist
Unmitigated hokum, utterly ridiculous, yet a scenery-chewing Russell Crowe proves a guilty pleasure
I went to see The Pope’s Exorcist with low expectations, and they were duly met. This pulls no punches in piling on cliches, exaggerating them, and adding at least an extra three toppings of preposterousness. It therefore can’t be recommended with a straight face, but as this builds to a ludicrous-beyond-belief climax, it crosses into hallowed so-bad-it’s-good territory. In short, if approached with the right mindset, The Pope’s Exorcist is a modest guilty pleasure for horror fans.
All the more ridiculous for being supposedly based in truth, let me assure you this is about as fact-based as any of The Conjuring films (ie, barely, if at all). Whilst the central protagonist Father Gabriele Amorth was indeed a real figure, appointed as exorcist to the Diocese of Rome by the Pope between 1986 and 2016, this film is fiction. It bristles with the kind of nonsense that will have theologians and historians erupting in a chorus of huffing and puffing disapproval. Don’t expect to be scared either. Unless you’re a horror movie novice, for all its gore and CGI pyrotechnics, this film couldn’t be accused of being frightening. But it isn’t boring either.
