Film Review – The Pope’s Exorcist

There are plenty of movies about exorcisms, with the practice of pulling demonic spirits out of innocent souls catnip to genre filmmakers still chasing the high 1973’s “The Exorcist” left behind. After recently enduring the dullness of 2022’s “Prey for the Devil,” audiences are now offered “The Pope’s Exorcist,” which tries to amplify its message of Catholic might by using a real-world man of Satanic action as inspiration, with the evil encounters and experiences of Father Gabriele Amorth (who allegedly performed over 50,000 exorcisms) used by screenwriters Michael Petroni (“The Rite”) and Evan Spilliotopoulos (“The Unholy”), with both men taking previous stabs at the subgenre, coming up short in the fright department. The authenticity of Amorth’s claims are the subject of “The Pope’s Exorcist,” with the material aiming to turn him into a heroic figure of authority, facing a most determined demon working to rattle the man of God. There’s a lot of a same old stuff in the feature, which does have the benefit of an engaged performance from Russell Crowe, but as a chiller, director Julius Avery (“Overlord,” “Samaritan”) doesn’t provide a fresh approach. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com