Film Review - The Pope's Exorcist (2023)

 The Pope’s Exorcist stars Russell Crowe as Father Amorth who is the chief Exorcist for the Vatican and his holiness the Pope (Franco Nero) and his talents take him to Spain and an old abbey that is being renovated for sale but a young boy (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) has also been possessed by a powerful demon one that Father Amorth will have to stop.

The Pope’s Exorcist is sadly not a very good movie and is a bit of a mess tonally at times but whenever Russell Crowe is on screen with his cheesy Italian accent, his scooter and is working his magic as Father Amorth he is actually good fun to watch and you find yourself kind of laughing at the film to a certain extent and his accent isn’t that far removed from his accent in Thor Love and Thunder last year where he pretty much riffed on Con the Fruiterer and he more or less does similar here.

But outside of him the film isn’t very good and first and foremost it wants to be a horror movie but it utterly fails at being scary or horrifying or exciting to watch its just the usual loud noises on the soundtrack, people getting thrown around as if a Sith Lord is in the film and the jump scares which aren’t too bad here but not that scary either and given that 1973’s The Exorcist is an iconic and horrifying horror film it makes you wish this movie could live up to even a tenth of that films effectiveness.

And also as for the storytelling well again at times it wants to be a horror film, at times Crowe’s character is so over the top he feels like he’s in a comedy and then there’s a side story with the Church and Father Amorth that just makes the same confessions we’ve seen before with this kind of film that deals with this subject matter and none of it except some of Crowe’s jokes aren’t that interesting though one of Crowe’s jokes did make me think of a Simpsons gag at one point.

And so that was the Pope’s Exorcist and I Simon Leigh Waite, patron of the Holy Church of the Cinema CAST THEE OUT as this movie is a turkey unworthy of the sacred cinema space but hey at least Air and John Wick 4 are out there at the moment, 1 out of 5.