Maybe I shouldn't post a review of this week's movie rental, The Rite, as I gave up on the film halfway through. It would fall into the "religious horror" genre, I guess, and many in that genre have ended up on my favorite movies list, but still this movie, based on The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist by journalist Matt Baglio, just rubbed me the wrong way.
The plot -- Michael Kovak (Colin O'Donoghue), a young man who lives with his ultra-Catholic undertaker dad (Rutger Hauer), hates his anti-Six-Feet-Under life and applies to seminary on a scholarship to get away from home, planning to drop out after graduation instead of becoming a priest. He does well in seminary, except for theology studies, and feels no doubts about not being ordained. That is, until his priest-mentor says that if he does leave without becoming a priest, his scholarship will turn into a $100,000 student loan (can seminary really cost this much!?). The priest tells him he'll let him off the financial hook if Michael will agree to take a two month exorcist class at the Vatican. Michael agrees.
- Two months in Rome - how bad could that be?
Michael joins the class in Rome (based on a class sponsored by the Legionaries of Christ - yikes!) but remains skeptical about the existence of the devil and the worth of exorcism, as does a fellow classmate, a reporter, Angelina (Alice Braga). The instructor sends Michael to work with practicing exorcist, Fr. Lucasa (Anthony Hopkins), a Jesuit (heh). Lucasa lives in a church-affiliated hovel with a courtyard filled with stray cats, and seems tired, distracted, depressed, and disturbed, but hey, given his job, can we be surprised? He takes Michael under his wing as he exorcises demons, yet Michael continues to doubt until one of Lucasa's exorcees dies under mysterious circumstances .... Michael then begins experiencing unpleasant supernatural phenomena and Lucasa becomes himself possessed.
I've read that the film goes on to have Michael successfully exorcise Lucasa's demon and then decide to become a priest after all, But a small frog had already been tossed into an incinerator and I was starting to worry about the continuing well-being of all the stray cats so conveniently living at Lucasa's dwelling ;) so it was at this point that I stopped watching the movie -- it wasn't just the animals in jeopardy that made me quit watching -- the film was just so dark, depressing, and emotionally ugly (and, ok, scary) that I didn't want any more of it in my head.
I suppose part of what I disliked about the film is the sort of Catholic stamp of approval it seemed to be wearing -- the movie is said to be based on facts, it begins with a the-devil-really-exists quote from JPII, the script writer was Catholic, the US Bishops approved of the film, and Catholic Roger Ebert gave the movie three stars. Is my church really all about "the devil made me do it" ? :(
