The Rite Review

                                                        1 1/2 Nuts

Director: Mikael Håfström

It’s interesting how lazy horror films have gotten.  All you need to have is a few moments that make the audience jump from sudden ear piercing loudness or extreme gore. Thankfully, The Rite does not have gore; however it also does not have suspense.  This disjointed mess of a film had the audience laughing in parts that were supposed to be serious.  They also threw in a few extra jokes to lighten the mood; granted this film was not scary to begin with.  The movie is about Michael Kovack, played by Colin O’Donoghue, a young man who is becoming a priest.  However, when he begins to question his faith, a priest at his school suggests he go to the Vatican to learn how to become an exorcist.  Once there, he meets up with Father Lucas Trevant, played by Anthony Hopkins, who is an experienced exorcist.   Father Lucas then tries to shows Michael how real the Devil truly is. 

This movie did not work for me.  It follows Michael, who is by far the blandest protagonists I have seen in a while.  The story moves around him, instead of him moving the story.  He goes from place to place because other people tell him to.  He is almost emotionless, and in turn he is not a captivating character. Compounding Michael’s lack of likeability, he is also incredible dumb.  Throughout the film there are signs that the devil is real but he successfully ignores them as does the film. I found myself really not caring what would happen to him because the character really didn’t seem to care.

Looking back, I had trouble seeing what the actual conflict of the film was.  I believe the conflict was about Michael losing his faith. However, he didn't really seem very concerned about getting it back. Conveniently, faith returns and falls back into place at the end of the film. Michael doesn’t seem to try hard to regain his religious beliefs, it just happens.  Most of the film he is following Father Lucas around as he performs exorcisms, and in these scene the conflict is not really present.

The 3^rd act of the film is incredibly contrived and is only there so the protagonist faith can be restored. 

In a peaNut Shell:  This is not the creepy exorcism movie that people were expecting. There is little in terms of suspense, in fact, the only time that my heart was racing was when two cops came into our theater and removed some kids that were movie hopping. The pacing of the film is all over the place and the script is just not good. This is one to skip.