The Rite stuff — almost
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Limited Time Offer - Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!The Rite
Bill Maher, TV comic and well-known atheist, said of The Rite that he cannot be frightened by anyone he could escape by taking the stairs two at a time. Yes, Anthony Hopkins is in his 80s now, but he can still summon up enough bark to make the viewer fear his bite. (Though the old dude might lose a few teeth in the action.)
The Rite is about a young almost-priest named Michael Kovak, played by Colin O’Donoghue, who has pretty much lost his faith — if he ever had it at all. His father, played by Rutger Hauer, runs the family business, undertaking. Young Michael figures he can either go into his dad’s mortuary biz or become a priest. Kind of a narrow range of options he’s set himself.
No matter. He chooses the priesthood and graciously allows Holy Mother Church to put him through four years of university. When he sends a letter to his superior saying he’s going to bow out before taking the final step to priesthood, his superior blackmails him with the threat of having to pay back his “student loans,” amounting to $100,000. The alternative is for Michael to hightail it to Rome and learn all about exorcism.
The superior, played by the diminutive Toby Jones (Infamous and The Mist), claims that there is such a need for trained exorcists around the world that hundreds of thousands must be trained. At the same time, he acknowledges that the average age of nuns is very old. This all means that shortly we’re going to be inundated with demons — here, there and everywhere.
Devil-may-care attitude
Once in Rome, Michael starts his exorcism lessons. Also in the class is a beautiful young woman named Angeline, played by Alice Braga. She’s a reporter who wants to write about the growing use of exorcism.
Michael is also introduced to Father Lucas Trevant, played by the always entertaining Hopkins. The old man lives in a lonely, run-down old house with about a hundred cats. Father Lucas also treats the demon-afflicted in his sitting room. Among these victims is Rosaria, played by dark, wide-eyed Marta Gastini. Her story is interwoven with incidents from Michael’s life, confusing and spooking the young man.
When Rosaria’s young life comes to a bloody conclusion, there seems only one place for the offensive demon to go: into the saintly old priest himself. Now Michael and his gal-pal Angeline must exorcise Father Lucas — even though neither has experience at doing an exorcism and Michael isn’t even sure if he believes any of this supernatural rubbish.
Bring in the Campbell’s!
I’m with Michael on this one. While there are a couple of odd occurrences, for the most part everything that is displayed could be explained by mental illness. The possessed cought up long, nasty, old-fashioned nails (often in groups of three, reminding us of what happened to poor put-upon Jesus all those years ago), but there is none of that over-the-top demonic abandon demonstrated in The Exorcist.
The movie even makes fun of this fact. Old Father Lucas asks Michael: “What were you expecting? Spinning heads and pea soup?” Maybe not expecting it, but something a tad more interesting than veiny makeup and gravelly voices would have been welcome.
The Rite manages to conjure up a few scares, but they are rather small and weak. When Michael finally bests the demon, forcing it to reveal that it is the powerful Baal, all the young pseudo-priest does is kick him out. Seems to me that could have been some of the most interesting stuff for a movie on this topic. Alas, it is a movie of let-downs and anti-climax.
Let’s also just mention that this is yet another of those demonic-possession movies in which the Roman Catholic Church is shown to be the one-and-only church that has got the answers. No Baptist, Buddhist or Brahmin is going to help in this situation; demons of Hell only answer to Jesus and family.
Your Humble Reviewer would recommend this movie to fans of Hopkins and those who don’t want to see a barrage of gross, over-the-top imagery. This is demonic possession for gentlemen and ladies, and not the usual bloodthirsty crowd./JE
out of a possible five skulls.
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