A young priest (Colin O’Donoghue) in training, who starts to doubt his beliefs in religion, is sent to Rome to an exorcism school at the Vatican, to help find his faith. Once there, he is still unsure about what he believes to be demonic possessions and what he feels is just people suffering from mental breakdowns. His teacher sends him to meet an exorcist specialist by the name of Monsignor Lucas (Anthony Hopkins). Lucas lets the priest join him in an exorcism of a young pregnant girl, to show him that the devil is real and that demons do exist and possess people. The priest still has his doubts, until he is confronted by a demon that takes over Monsignor Lucas. Now he must regain his faith in God, if he is going to have any chance at exorcising the demon that has taken over the Monsignor.
This movie reminded me of another exorcism movie that I reviewed not so long ago called “The Last Exorcismâ€. In that movie, the priest also had his doubts in the existence of demons and the practice of exorcising those demons from the host. I have to say that this movie had much better effects than that one. Also this movie was marketed as being taken from actual events that occurred. Now after seeing this movie, do I believe in demonic possession? I can’t quite say yes or no to that question, but I can say that if these events did actually happen, then there is more to our world and religion than what we know of. Anthony Hopkins as usual did an outstanding job as the Monsignor in this movie. His caliber of acting is without question one of the best actors of our generation. The young actor who plays the priest was pretty good in his role as well. The movie had some great demonic possession effects as the pregnant girl twist and turned her body in a lot of unimaginable positions, unlike that of the other movie I mentioned earlier. It was really unsettling to see some of the contortions that were portrayed it the movie.
As far as possession movies go, it was definitely one of the better ones when it came to that. Other than that, the movie wasn’t really scary. It did have a couple of scenes that where meant to make you jump, but there were very few. One thing that they added in this movie that I don’t remember ever being mentioned in another possession movie is that you need to find out the demons name in order to defeat it. If you’ve ever seen a movie involving demonic possession, then you know that can sometimes be the least of your troubles. Overall I feel the movie was ok, it just wasn’t that frightening. I gave the movie 2 demons out of 4. The demonic scenes were the highlight of this movie, and frankly that’s why I went to see it. The movie runs 2hours and 7mins. It was rated PG-13 for disturbing thematic material, violence, frightening images, and language including sexual references. The film was directed by Mikael Hafstrom. The film was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.
“There are two types of human beings in this world: the divine, and the demonic.â€- Bhagavad Gita
Next review: TBD
