Review – The Rite

It's been awhile since I saw an exorcism movie that even tried to be serious, let alone scary. So on that point this was a refreshing change. It even starts out with an element of doubt, an "is this demonic possession or merely mental illness and/or parlor tricks?" reminiscent of William Peter Blatty's famous novel (though not the movie based thereon). Sadly, Hollywood simply can't resist the temptation to abandon ambiguity and dive into the pool of gnarly devil effects. A young priest-to-be (Colin O'Donoghue) with doubts about the validity of his chosen profession gets sent to Rome for exorcism training. There he's paired with a crusty old practitioner of the art (Anthony Hopkins) who takes his own approach to the practice, performing the job like a blend between a family dentist and one of those sleight-of-hand guys who bother people at Applebees. I watched this because I was in the mood for a horror movie that someone actually spent some money to make, and on that count it did a reasonable job. Mildly amusing