What do you get when you put a group of competent actors in a film with a script that clearly should have been written 30 years ago? You get The Rite, or shall I call it, the Movie That Would Have Been Good Before The Exorcist. I mean, hey, there are some good people in this, but it’s pretty obvious that the fact that Anthony Hopkins stars here is why the movie got made at all.
What do you get when you put a group of competent actors in a film with a script that clearly should have been written 30 years ago? You get The Rite, or shall I call it, the Movie That Would Have Been Good Before The Exorcist. I mean, hey, there are some good people in this, but it’s pretty obvious that the fact that Anthony Hopkins stars here is why the movie got made at all.
Colin O’Donoghue is Michael Kovak, a young priest with little faith, who is convinced by his theological instructor to go to Italy and take this course on exorcism. It’s pretty obvious he’s being told to do it is because he’s gonna see some fucked up shit that’s gonna make him believe in God and Satan real quick and then won’t want to bail on his becoming a full blown priest. Of course while there he is told to go visit Father Lucas, played by Anthony Hopkins, because he’s gonna show him some shit that’ll freak him out, at least. Has anyone seen this movie yet? I felt like I had.
But, Kovak is pretty hooked on science and psychiatry for finding answers that pertain to people that are supposedly possessed by the Devil. Yeah, he’s a hard sell, that Kovaks. He was working with his father most of his life helping with the Funeral home business. He didn’t like that, but in his family, you either stuck with the family business, or became a priest. In order to get out of the house, he chose the hard place instead of the rock, so his heart really isn’t in it anyway. Surprise, surprise.
Turns out, Michael’s mom died when he was a boy of ten or so. There’s a flicker of light when we get more of this part of the story – Michael lost his faith then, at his mother’s burial. But later in the film when they refer back to that flashback, they manage to do it in such a way that it actually reduces the impact of this reveal and that flicker of light gets snuffed out. Maybe the director, Mikael Hafstrom (the pretty good movie 1408), or writer Michael Petroni, are the Devil for screwing this up. And what’s with all the freakin’ Michaels here? I get it, Saint Michael the Archangel reference. I think ALL the characters and crew should be named Michael. “Who was in it?” “Michael.” Who worked on it?” “Michael.” See how easy that is?
Of course the film leads to Father Lucas becoming possessed and Kovaks having to confront his evilness. Anthony Hopkins is fine here. Hey, he’s Anthony Hopkins. How bad can it really get? But the fact that there is nothing new here to be offered to the exorcism horror genre makes all of it moot. I just didn’t care about any of it. And there isn’t any great gory effects, no particuarly shocking scenes – certainly nothing that you haven’t already seen in The Exorcist. So what’s the point? And you know that scene where the person talks to their parent on the phone, but then two seconds later the hospital calls and tells them their parent died hours ago? Yeah, it’s in there. Seen it!
Most of the acting is good, although Colin O’Donoghue is pretty under-played as Kovaks. He could have been a bit less sullen or flat. But otherwise that cast is fine, it’s just that you don’t care about all this stuff you saw done much better in The Exorcist over 30 years ago. If The Rite had been done in 1971, well, then we’d have something here. But alas, this director was only 13 at the time. Maybe he never saw The Exorcist? That can’t be, can it? I don’t want to think about it.
And I don’t want to think about The Rite anymore, either. Let it take its’ two kittenhands right back to Hell with the rest of its’ rehashed, cliched snore-fest and leave me be.
~ Neil T. Weakley, your average movie-goer, looking forward to when movies get better this year. Oh, and if you want cool stuff about God, the Devil and everything in between, read both comics Hellblazer(Jamie Delano), and Lucifer (Mike Carey). Really good stuff.
