Review: The Rite

Colin O’Donoghue stars as a trainee priest and son of a funeral parlour owner (Rutger Hauer). There’s the feeling he’s entering the priesthood merely as a way to get out of the depressing family business and his overbearing dad. Nearing graduation, O’Donoghue seems to have lost his faith and contemplates resignation from Catholic seminary. His superior (Toby Jones) encourages him to go to Rome and study exorcism instead. He agrees to this, though in classes taught by Father Xavier (Cirian Hinds), he finds himself still having many doubts and scepticism. Father Xavier encourages him to seek out a veteran exorcist named Father Trevant (Sir Anthony Hopkins), who is currently conducting an exorcism on a pregnant 16 year-old girl (Marta Gastini). At first, the young man still clings to beliefs of a rational and more simplistic, psychological rationale for what he sees. However, events become increasingly frightening and have O’Donoghue thinking twice. Alice Braga plays a journalist who follows O’Donoghue, whilst Torrey DeVitto is the girl back home he leaves behind, along with best friend Chris Marquette.

You’d think a horror film featuring Tony Hopkins, Rutger Hauer, and Toby Jones would have to be at least interesting. Unfortunately, this 2011 offering from Swedish director Mikael Håfström (the highly underrated Stephen King adaptation “1408”) and writer Michael Petroni (“The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader”) is pretty uninspired stuff. After “The Exorcist” in 1973, filmmakers have tried in vain to bring out anything new or interesting in screen exorcisms, and this film (based on a true story ‘suggested’ in a book by Matt Baglio) has the added detriment of being particularly similar to “The Last Exorcism” (Sceptical exorcist, pregnant woman who is possessed, possibly raped by her dad, and there’s a very similar plot trajectory etc). That film came out before this one, and unfortunately (despite two totally different stylistic approaches), the comparison between the two leaves this one coming off poorly. It’s a vastly inferior film, and having a Welsh actor playing an exorcist just gave me bad memories of “Exorcist II: The Heretic”, to top it all off. This is easily one of the worst performances of Hopkins’ career. He’s dour and dull initially (seemingly lacking both energy and inspiration), before his character undergoes a shift in the latter stages (not related to anything in the source book, I might add), resulting in an entirely laughable and embarrassing caricature of a performance. Co-star Colin O’Donaghue is no better, so stiff that he can’t muster up the energy to competently play up his character’s cynicism and scepticism. As the possessed girl, Marta Gastini is also uninspiring, especially in comparison to her counterpart in “The Last Exorcism”.

 

I also found much of the film hard to swallow. I didn’t find the exorcism lecture scenes convincing. I’m sure there are schools where such theological studies are taught, but would they look and operate so similarly to other college/university courses? I didn’t buy it. Even less convincing is the idea that a reporter would be able to get into these classes and sit in on them. Even if she were acting covertly, I doubt she’d get away with it. Not to mention the fact that she’s a woman! I’m an atheist and know less than zero, but I was surprised that none of these Catholics were surprised to find a woman in their midst (surely not a frequent occurrence), let alone a reporter. I doubt the Catholic Church welcome the press with open arms these days. Then again, we’re talking about a film where a trainee priest is passing all of his subjects except Theology. What the fuck? So logic and plausibility aren’t the film’s strong points, I guess.

Narrative isn’t its strong suit, either, as the film plays out extremely choppily early on. Hauer, DeVitto, and Marquette, in particular, are poorly treated as a result of this narrative approach. I would’ve removed their characters entirely (DeVitto seems to be forgotten about once Braga turns up anyway) and sped-up O’Donoghue’s transition from seminary dropout to exorcist-in waiting. Even the Braga character ends up with not a whole helluva lot to do. Were Braga (who looks more and more like “NCIS” actress Cote de Pablo every time I see her) and DeVitto only thrown in here because Håfström and Petroni were worried we’d think O’Donoghue was gay? Braga (who the camera wants to get all up inside with at every opportunity) ends up completely useless, so if this was indeed the reason for her conclusion, then the cop-out attitude towards any hint of romance between her and O’Donoghue (who isn’t a priest yet, don’t forget) is something I have serious issues with. In fact, it bothers me a lot more than the film’s clear pro-faith stance. I’m an atheist, or at least an agnostic atheist, but even I would choose God over the Devil, despite believing in neither, so I was able to deal with that. It’s just a movie, after all.

The film does have its positive attributes. The supporting cast, for instance, is full of ominous signs of something very much anti-God. I mean, would you trust Rutger Hauer with your dead family member’s body? Would you trust a priest played by Toby Jones? Jones, by the way, gives the best performance in the entire film, though it’s always nice to see Hauer being thrown a bone. The always ominous-looking Ciaran Hinds is also a red flag to something sinister and nefarious going on, and yet he ends up being exactly what he claims to be at the outset: A religious academic. But the very casting of these people at least has the suggestion of unease and distrust throughout, and that helps make the film a little more tense than it is. And believe me, it’s mostly completely flat. I know it’s more drama than horror, but geez, the horror sucks even when it does arrive (Mostly due to the fact that it’s hard to do anything fresh with this subgenre of horror).

Cinematographer Ben Davis also deserves a mention. He photographs rain in a very beautiful and artistic way, without hogging my attention in an aggressive or obnoxious manner. The locations are nice, but as usual, it seems entirely useless to me. I’m not interested in sight-seeing for the sake of it, and would get bored after about twenty minutes. That’s why I like movies with nice locations, so I don’t need to go anywhere.

At the end of the day, it’s all well and good to want to give us a serious-minded approach to an exorcist flick. But when you offer nothing new or interesting and ultimately end up breaking out the familiar tropes anyway, why bother? Uninspired, and if you’ve seen “The Exorcist” and “The Last Exorcism”, completely unnecessary.

 

Rating: C