Here's a strange thing. When I stumbled across The Vatican Tapes I made a couple of assumptions. I knew it was directed by Mark Neveldine, so I thought there may be some hyperactive insanity. And, considering the title and the tagline, I thought it was a found footage horror movie. Neither of those things were applicable, and yet I spent a lot of the runtime wishing that they were.
Olivia Taylor Dudley plays Angela, a young woman who takes a turn for the worse. It's obvious from the start that she's going to be causing a lot of trouble, to put it mildly, as some demonic entity uses her body to enter our world. This is upsetting for Angela's boyfriend, Pete (John Patrick Amedori), and her father, Roger (Dougray Scott). Maybe they don't need to be too worried though, especially with Cardinal Mattias Bruun (Peter Andersson) and Father Loranzo (Michael Peña) on the case.
It's hard to fully convey just how shockingly redundant The Vatican Tapes is, a horror movie so mediocre that you wish for it to change format at some point. To do something, anything, that will make it seem like something worth your time. It does nothing well. You get the body contortions, you get the different language(s) being spoken, you get the new-found strength and powers. It's a very dull game of "possession movie bingo".
Although it would be easy to blame writers Christopher Borrelli and Michael C. Martin (developing the story from Borrelli and Chris Morgan), the framework that they create for the film is covered in a wet blanket that is the direction from Neveldine. I'd rather have seen some headache-inducing hyperactive craziness than the stream of visually dull nothingness that ends up being passed off as a slick horror movie.
You'd think some of the casting might help. It doesn't. Any time that Scott or Peña appear onscreen leads to a slightly more enjoyable time, thanks to their presence, but they can't do enough to make up for the weak performances from Dudley and Amedori. Andersson is also a deficit, a pale imitation of so many other old wise men we've seen in these kind of films. Kathleen Robertson does okay as Dr. Richards, a psychiatrist who ends up receiving some acerbic honesty from Angela, and Djimon Hounsou deserves more than the few minutes of screentime that he gets. That's all I can say about the central cast.
This takes no risks, provides no surprises, and delivers no scares. It's very difficult to think of why this was made, and who it is intended for. I definitely won't ever recommend it to anyone, and I hope it fades from my memory as quickly as possible.
2/10
No comments:
Post a Comment