An American seminary student travels to Italy to take an exorcism course. This crock like plot summary probably may sounds tempting, for me at least. Actually I’m kind of interested in exorcism while it’s being a dangerous spiritual task, an act of Magick work. In Roman Catholic dogma exorcism is a ritual but not a sacrament, unlike baptism or confession. But just like in many other cases which involve the Church, there are more rumors than facts about exorcism and for sure the Church still keeps secret documents about this rituals and practices.
So, I hoped that this new movie maybe open a window to these secrets, I wasn’t looking for another movies like “The Exorcist” and “The Exorcism of Emily Rose”. But the truth is, “The Rite” – in my opinion – it’s not even about exorcism.
This film is about faith and lack of faith. The exorcism it’s just a tricky add-on to rise the interest for the film. Well, there’s still a few funny and a few interesting things, but the subject of exorcism remains scratched only on the surface. It’s kind of disappointing, but not unexpected.
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist” – this famous quotes is re-served as “The highest proof of the existence of the devil is that we can not proof that he exist.” It’s kind of twisted demonstration, pretty axiomatic, but it bring us to the faith. And director Mikael HÃ¥fström try to convince us that Christ exist by showing us the devil.
The film starts promising, it loose its rhythm and from the middle comes back to a kind of soap opera final. If Mr. Hopkins wouldn’t be there, this film probably wouldn’t hit even the level of mediocrity. But Mr. Hopkins gives the production what he was hired for, he definitively deserve every penny he earn. It’s kind of funny, this is not a horror, not a drama, not anything for real, this is just a film. 114 minutes, ok if you’re bored to death, but completely skipable.
