Review of The Rite (2011) by Sean W — 20 Jun 2011

I have no doubt that out of everyone I know, I will give this movie the lowest rating. It all goes back to The Exorcist. The Exorcist is my favorite horror film of all time. It nails everything I'd ever want in that kind of movie. Great characters, a great story, and it's really fucking scary. Of course, "scary" is in the eye of the beholder. There are those who watch it and laugh, or scoff at the ridiculousness of it all. I can understand that. A movie's only as good as how much you invest yourself in it. With The Exorcist, I go all the way.

It's a wonder that it hasn't been remade yet (it's only a matter of time). We've had sequels, prequels, and movies emulating it. The latest is The Rite, and believe you me, it is one boring iteration.

The film starts with a young man, Michael (Colin O'Donoghue), who's been raised in a funeral home by his father, Istvan (Rutger Hauer). This is important because Michael has had a pretty dark upbringing, and believes that there isn't all that much special about death. It happens to all of us. Nothing glorious. Still, life at home is boring (much like this movie) and he decides to enter a seminary in order to get a solid 4 years of college. Thinking that he can just walk away from it when said 4 years are up, the church is like, "Aw hell naw. You goin' to take an exorcism course in Rome or we goin' to beat the mutha fuckin' 100 grand you owe us out of you!" (pfft, you wish the dialog in this movie was that exciting). So Michael has a change of heart, and heads off to exorcist training. There, at the Vatican, he remains skeptic that there's such thing as demonic possession, so his teach decides to send him to Father Lucas Trevant (Anthony Hopkins), the Obi-Wan of Exorcists. I'm just going to refer to him as Anthony Hopkins from here on out, because that's all he plays. It's the reason he was hired for the flick, and that's exactly what you get.

So Michael and Anthony Hopkins do a couple exorcisms, weird shit happens and Michael remains a skeptic. Then (spoiler alert!), Anthony Hopkins becomes possessed. I mean, c'mon, you'd have to be fuckin' blind if you saw the poster/cover for this movie and not figure out that Anthony Hopkins would be the one being all "creepy and shit" by the end of the movie (I apologize to all my blind readers). Will Michael rise up to the occasion, and find faith in order to exorcise his mentor? Of course.

And that's why this movie is so fucking boring. It's the paint-by-numbers version of The Exorcist. Nothing here is shocking or scary. You know why The Exorcist was? No, not because of pea soup or a spinning head, but because we believed in the characters. The story had us from the get-go. In this flick, the story is so lame and predictable that it's hard to enjoy any of it, even if the actors are taking it seriously. So what we're left watching are people making their best scary face, talking nonsense, contorting limbs, and waiting for the score to hit a loud crescendo in order to shock the audience into a "boo scare." The exorcisms are a joke.

It's obvious this movie was made to hit a certain market. It was "dumped" theatrically at the end of January, so couples could go see it the following weeks. Yeah, couples enjoy a good scary movie, but they deserve better than this. This is what they call a "paycheck" movie. It didn't gross all that much (domestically anyway) but I imagine it got the job done. This boring POS doesn't bring anything new to the cinematic table. Fuck this movie.