REVIEW: The Rite (2011)

  The Rite is the latest exorcist film, a horror subgenre with much unfulfilled potential and a lot of woeful films to answer for. The Rite aims for a more back-to-basics approach. Jettisoning the comic gimmickry of the recent Season of the Witch and the faux documentary tactics of The Last Exorcism¸ The Rite feels like a return to the principles and ideas of William Friedkin’s 1973 classic The Exorcist. But does it pull it off?

  Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue), an American with a troubled faith and limited options, decided to join the priesthood. He goes to Rome to study exorcism and meets Father Lucas Trevant, an apparently genuine exorcist. Michael remains sceptical but gets involved with the case of a local girl Rosario (Marta Gastini), who seems to be possessed by a demon. As the case becomes more serious, Michael finds that he no longer knows what to believe.

  Like The Exorcist, The Rite places its story in a firmly realistic world. The clash of science and religion is key to Michael’s doubts and there are many sequences in which apparently supernatural events are given rational explanations which may or may not be found wanting. While The Exorcist managed to convey these clashes, present a realistic setting in an almost documentary style and maintain a suitably eerie atmosphere throughout, The Rite is remarkably unconvincing. The sequences in which Rosario is under the control of the demon are done with limited computer effects and an emphasis on bone-crunching agony, as were the same sequences in The Exorcist. The problem is that, coming as it does almost forty years later, The Rite is too familiar and too Hollywood or, in other words, too safe.

  The film undermines itself in many ways. First, there are the lazy scare tactics, largely music jolts and creatures leaping out from behind things. There is also the treatment of Italy. When Michael first arrives, it is full of Italian cliches, namely loose women, the Colosseum, bad driving and Vespas. There are also the typical archetypes, with the priest having a crisis of faith, two understanding mentors and a love interest. Worst of all, the film goes for in-jokery at some points. The first exorcism sequence is played largely for laughs and references to The Exorcist abound. Following an exorcism, Hopkins wryly says to the confused Michael, “What did you expect? Head spinning and pea soup.” All the above, coupled with a typical Hollywood ending, merely manage to highlight the complete falsity of the film, making it difficult to care.

  A good exorcism film can question the foundations of belief and present a palpable clash between science and religion. The Rite aims to do this, but is too tame and conventional. It avoids offence and fails to create a believable world, one that could easily be a fitting representation of our own, in which to bring these issues to light. In the end, its just a lazy horror film that is not convincing, not scary and not memorable.