Review: Just like the battle between good and evil, ‘The Pope’s Exorcist’ is a little uneven

Despite the star power in its leading man Russell Crowe, The Pope’s Exorcist isn’t quite an instantly classic horror flick in the vein of something like The Conjuring, but it still makes for a solid – if slightly forgettable – time at the theater, which contains plenty of frights that may catch even the most grizzled of horror film veterans off-guard. 

Crowe plays Father Gabriele Amorth, the titular real-world priest who served as the chief exorcist of the Vatican until he passed away in 2016, whose files and stories served as the inspiration. Despite the macabre tone and supernatural nature of the film, Crowe’s character brings some refreshing levity to the long-tried and tested “priest vs. demon” trope. Watching an often-skeptical Amorth crack jokes while literally speaking with evil incarnate goes a long way to put a new coat of paint on big screen depictions of exorcisms. 

Amorth is summoned to a derelict church in Spain, which was inherited by a widowed family of three – Julia (Alex Essoe) and her two children Amy (Laurel Marsden) and Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney). The Pope’s Exorcist wastes little to no time getting into the swing of things, with Henry quickly becoming taken over and influenced by the sinister forces occupying the church grounds upon arriving.

Essoe and Marsden deliver stiff performances, but to their credit, their respective characters aren’t particularly fleshed out, ultimately existing for the purpose of justifying Henry’s presence in the haunted church. A shame, seeing as Essoe in particular has great horror credentials, well-established in a number of stellar Mike Flanagan projects. The rest of the actors involved in The Pope’s Exorcist deliver admirable turns, thanks to the script giving the actors and audiences plenty of backstory to chew on.

The Pope’s Exorcist also does well in shaking up the formula of an exorcism film by having something of a detective story breaking up Amorth’s tense encounters with Henry’s possessor, raising the story’s stakes to a new high as he uncovers some dark secrets about the Vatican. Although we could’ve gone without some of the Catholic Church’s historic misdeeds being explained away by said revelations, it’s executed to good effect for the sake of progressing the narrative. 

While the visual effects (both practical and digital) are scarce but convincing for the most part, the set piece which unfolds at the film’s climax just gets way too out-of-hand and silly, just about downgrading The Pope’s Exorcist to B-movie status, which is a shame considering how otherwise grounded (as far as tales about malevolent spooky demons can be) things had been up until that point. 

Ultimately, though, considering its mixed bag of performances, an overall fresh and cogent script right up until its way-too-wacky closing minutes, we wouldn’t quite stoop to calling The Pope’s Exorcist a B-tier terror. It’s good,  but not quite good enough to go down in the horror movie hall of fame.