Film Review: The Rite

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Wednesday, 09 March 2011 03:17
Written by Lloyd Carroll

Directed by: Mikael Håfströmalt
Written by: Michael Petroni, Matt Baglio
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Colin O’Donoghue, Ciaran Hinds, Toby Jones, Rutger Hauer, Alice Braga

One of the most famous film genres of the Seventies was devil-themed movies, with the most famous being 1973's The Exorcist. The popularity of The Exorcist and its sequels helped spawn the Chucky, Friday The 13th and Alien franchises. It has been awhile since we’ve had an old school exorcism film, so there is nothing wrong with trying to revive this horror genre. Unfortunately The Rite is a lousy film.

Michael Kovaks (Colin O’Donoghue) is a Chicago teen whose dad is a mortician (Rutger Hauer). He admits that he is not the most spiritual person in the world. But he applies for seminary school after receiving his high school diploma because, as he tells his best friend, “In my family you either become a priest or a mortician. I can graduate from seminary school and not take my final vows.”

He does well studying for the priesthood, but he resigns before committing to it -- much to the chagrin of his university mentor, Father Matthew (Toby Jones). Father Matthew informs Michael that the seminary has the right to change his scholarship to a student loan if he doesn’t become a priest. But Father Matthew says that out of frustration because he feels that Michael would be terrific at serving the church and the community.

Knowing his interest in psychology, Father Matthew tells Michael that the Vatican is offering a new program to train exorcists. Michael doesn’t believe in devil possession and thinks that those claiming demonic spirits in them are mentally disturbed. He is persuaded by Father Matthew’s key selling point, “What’s so bad about spending two months in Rome?”

While at the Vatican, one of Michael’s professors, Father Xavier (Ciaran Hinds), who has enjoyed debating with him about whether devils and demons do exist, sends him to an unorthodox priest, Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins), who performs exorcisms. Father Lucas isn’t bothered by the fact that Michael has his doubts about what he does. “You remind me of myself at your age,” he tells him.

Father Lucas, who is also a medical doctor, takes Michael to two patients that he is treating. The first patient is a teenager who may have been raped by her father and speaks in foreign tongues, cursing at him even though she only knows Italian. The second is a young boy who has dreams that a mule is attacking him and actually has hoof marks all over his body.

As one can guess, eyeballs roll to the back of the patients’ heads and there is lots of screaming and yelling. The plot has little coherence. Things really get laughingly awful, however, in the final twenty minutes when Father Lucas is attacked by the devil and it is up to Michael to save the priest's soul. Hopkins, whose character is a model of equanimity throughout the film, suddenly becomes Hannibal Lechter. Of course, a film audience will always identify Anthony Hopkins in that role and the filmmakers may just be having some fun with that fact.

One bizarre and disturbing sequence is when Michael’s father invites his young son to watch him working on a beautiful corpse, which happens to be his mom. Whether this actually happened in his life or is just a nightmare is never explained. In either case it is gratuitous and disturbing.

Anthony Hopkins, even when he is mugging for the camera, is fun to watch. The lead role of Michael, is played by Irish actor Colin O’Donoghue, who is making his screen debut. O’Donoghue does a good job of mastering an American accent, but he seems ill at ease on the big screen. Of course even the best actors can’t do much with a terrible script.

If you waste good money on this film, please don’t blame the devil.