The Pope's Exorcist (2023)

Like everyone, my mood can decide how I respond to a movie. Catch me on a good day and I may be receptive and kind. Catch me on a bad day and the film may have to work a lot harder to get me to warm to it. The Pope’s Exorcist caught me on a very good day. That is the only way I can explain why I enjoyed it so much.

Russell Crowe, going all out with his Italian accent, plays Father Gabriel Amorth, the titular character. He can battle demons whenever the need arises, but he can also spot other problems, and deal with them accordingly. When a family starts to have a serious problem, in the shape of the youngest member being possessed by a demon who demands an encounter with Father Amorth, the stage is set for the kind of epic battle of wills that can only end when souls are completely saved. Or completely damned.

Directed by Julius Avery (who did the excellent Overlord and the not-so-excellent Samaritan), this is everything you think it is going to be, a slick horror movie with dollops of CGI used to show demon activity, a BIG performance from Crowe, and lots of moments that feel highly derivative.

Writers Michael Petroni, Evan Spiliotopolous, and others who helped form the main story, are aware that their central character comes with a whole load of horror movie baggage (it won’t take anyone long to find out why he is such a notable figure in the horror genre), and they don’t shy away from moments that will feel familiar to anyone with a moderate interest in the genre. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the script leans heavily into the familiar, using a lot of standard horror movie moments as a background that highlights the humour and personality of the central character, and that proves to be a surprisingly good approach.

Crowe is a lot of fun here, keeping a twinkle in his eye and a wry grin on his face right up until the second that things get intense and dangerous. He seems to be having a blast, and his amusement and energy are infectious. Alex Essoe, Peter Desouza-Feighoney, and Laurel Marsden are the family members who end up trying to fend off a demonic onslaught, with both Essoe and Marsden doing great work while Desouza-Feighoney seems to have been picked for his suitability with the practical and digital effects. Daniel Zovatto is your typical inexperienced “assistant”, aka the young priest to fight alongside the old priest, and he’s fine, but bonus points go to whoever decided to cast Franco Nero as his Holiness himself, the Pope. He isn’t onscreen often, but he appears just often enough to raise a smile.

I rolled my eyes when The Pope’s Exorcist began, and I rolled my eyes with every new “revelation”. But I was also smiling as I rolled my eyes. And, maybe because I was in a very good mood, I soon realised that I was rolling my eyes a bit less and smiling a bit more, despite the standard CGI tricks and the hugely predictable third act. I enjoyed this. I would watch it again. I would also definitely watch any sequel based around Crowe’s portrayal of this character.

7/10

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Prime Time: Samaritan (2022)

There was a time when a city had a hero, Samaritan, but those times are gone. Samaritan and his brother, a nemesis named . . . Nemesis, disappeared after a lengthy battle. Both were presumed dead. But young Sam Cleary (Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton) thinks at least one of them survived, and he thinks it is an old man who lives in the building just across from him. As that old man, Joe, is played by Sylvester Stallone, he might be right. Will Samaritan return, and will he deal with the new threat (Cyrus, played by Pilou Asbæk) that the city is facing?

I could have worked a bit more on that summary, but that would require more effort than the writer of the film put into the plotting. I have enjoyed some previous work from Bragi F. Schut (mainly the Escape Room movie), but this is bad. And it’s bad from start to finish, despite having a few scenes between young Sam and old Joe that show promise.

Director Julius Avery entertained me with the excellent Overlord a few years ago so I know that he can so great work. He can keep viewers grounded, in terms of geography and timing. You wouldn’t know that from this film. Scenes go by that could be indicating minutes, hours, or days, and the locations could be almost next door to one another or in opposite sides of the country (the only exceptions being Sam’s apartment and Joe’s apartment). And my summary of the film? It is depicted in animated form at the very start of the movie. 

A couple of things work, mainly the cast and a few decent fight scenes, but this is a superhero movie that thinks it is slyly subverting the superhero movie, and it really isn’t. If you haven’t spotted the third act moment being set up from the very opening moments then I don’t know what to tell you, but I saw it coming a mile away. The fact that the film allows it to play out as if it is a major bombshell ends up undermining it, and undermining the whole film. It doesn’t help that it is followed by a flashback with some of the worst de-aging FX work I have seen in a mainstream film.

Stallone is as good as you would expect in the role, his performance helped by the fact that he is an elderly man who could still beat up most of us with one hand tied behind his back. Walton is fine, even if he is credited with the middle name ‘Wanna’, but his character is sorely underwritten, and surprisingly hard to root for at times. Dascha Polanco is perfectly fine, playing the mother of Walton’s character, and various minor goodies and baddies are suitably portrayed by Moises Arias, Jared Odrick, Sophia Tatum, Abraham Clinkscales, and Shameik Moore. Asbæk is the highlight, however, and he manages to lift the movie slightly with every one of his scenes, seeming to revel in the experience of playing the kind of charismatic and deadly villain you could slot into pretty much every action thriller from the 1980s onwards.

There are one or two ideas here that make the appeal of the movie obvious, with everyone involve probably thinking they would get to have their cake and eat it, starring in a superhero movie that tried to be a step removed from other superhero movies. Sadly, those ideas are either under-developed or worthless, especially when couched in a feature that is so flat and consistently lazy. There’s not one aspect that deserves extra praise, from the score to the wardrobe, from production design to the effects, and I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone. Just watch Mystery Men instead. Or Super. Or Defendor. Or one of many other movies that twists some of the superhero movie tropes.

3/10

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Overlord (2018)

If there's one thing we all know by now it's that Nazis would have made an army of zombie soldiers if they could have. The only thing worse than a Nazi is a zombie Nazi, and they have appeared in popular entertainment quite often over the past couple of decades. They appear here, but the plot chooses to focus on the very real horrors of war, first and foremost, with the standard genre thrills mixed in slowly but surely until brought to the surface for the third act.

Starting with a group of soldiers being airdropped into Germany, Overlord is a tense and visceral experience from the opening scenes. The skies are shredded with anti-aircraft gunfire, meaning that many of the young men are killed before they even get a chance to jump out of their craft. The ones that land are immediately in great danger, and it never gets easier. But the mission is a vital one, destroying a radio tower that has been causing all kinds of problems, to put it mildly. The soldiers find someone willing to help hide them, a young French woman named Chloe, they start to figure out how best to complete their mission, but it all becomes even more complicated when they discover bodies being experimented on and a serum that seems capable of creating mutated super-soldiers.

Written by Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith, it's intriguing to see that this was developed from a story idea from the former, who has a background in more varied dramatic works. Smith seems to be the horror guy, of the two, but both have worked well together in balancing the wartime tension with the pulpy entertainment aspects.

Director Julius Avery, working on what is only his second feature, does a great job with the material. It's often dark, and the action is frantic at times, but you never lose sight of the identity and location of the various characters, and the set-pieces are perfectly paced. Special effects are great throughout, impressively bizarre and bloody, but the focus stays on the main characters, even while horrific oddities start to multiply around them.

The cast are another big plus. Jovan Adepo and Wyatt Russell are the two main soldiers, with Russell being the one who ends up in charge after so many deaths in the first act, and both of them do excellent work (I'm not familiar with Adepo but have already come to expect excellence every time I see Russell onscreen). Mathilde Ollivier is equally good as Chloe, a determined survivor with loved ones to look after, and the main villain of the piece is played with relish by Pilou Asbæk. Other characters are portrayed by John Magaro, Iain De Caestecker, Jacob Anderson, Gianny Taufer (a standout as the younger brother of Chloe), and Dominic Applewhite.

There may be a little too much familiarity here, which might explain why there were so many mixed/lukewarm reviews when this was released in cinemas, but Overlord takes the elements that we've all seen elsewhere and blends them into a fantastic piece of genre entertainment, with impressive visuals and a score by Jed Kurzel that's also worth mentioning (I know, I know, I always forget to mention scores, and I constantly apologise for it).

8/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.