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The Rite

Available on Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD, On Demand and for Download 5/17 http://bit.ly/TheRiteFB


As far as horror films dealing with exorcisms go, “The Rite” has many elements in place that should constitute a nice and creepy time. Possessed children writhing around. Catholic priests flinging Holy water all over the place. Sir Anthony Hopkins caressing his inner-Hannibal to amp up the macabre factors a few notches. Everything is there. But somehow the film manages to be most successful at boring the audience, ultimately making for a grueling, not gruesome, sort of entertainment.

We meet Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue), a doubting priest-to-be, who is flown off to Vatican City to take exorcism classes (don’t laugh, that’s actually true enough to make the film “inspired by true events”) and is forced to go under the tutelage of an aging exorcist, Father Lucas Trevant (Hopkins), to show him how to battle demons. Kovak is more inclined to believe that psychological disorders are the cause of the spinning heads and monstrous voices that one finds in your common exorcism, making him a strange choice for the “let’s go get the devil” program. He has his own issues that haunt him and, while struggling with his demons, he slowly begins to invest in the notion that what he is witnessing is real.

“The Rite” is directed by Mikael Hafstrom, a Swedish director who has made such films as “Derailed” and the Stephen King adaptation, “1408”. The film’s failures belong to Hafstrom who does nothing with the material. The story plods along and very little actually happens. There are ancillary characters, such as a lovely female reporter, whose presence is entirely unnecessary (she spends the majority of the climax outside of a door, listening!!!). Hopkins seems to be having a good time and hams it up immensely in the film’s final act but it is all hollow rhetoric that’s impossible to emotionally invest in as a viewer. Colin O’Donoghue, who needs to be the anchor of the film, is the most un-charismatic leading man in a long while. His performance is one-monotone-note and every moment spent with him is a bland one.

I find the exorcist sub-genre captivating and have always been a sucker for this sort of fare. “The Exorcist” remains one of my favorite films ever and I usually get way too worked up by movies like “The Rite”. To illustrate: I slept with the light on for three weeks after “The Last Exorcism” last year and that was no scream fest to be sure. If this movie were to scare anyone, it would be me. But nothing.

 

The DVD/Blu-ray features and alternate ending and an insightful making of called “The Rite: Soldier of God” that deals with the actual practices going on in the Catholic Church today.

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