Review: 'The Rite' is tiresome mumbo-jumbo

Film: The Rite
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Colin O’Donoghue, Ciaran Hinds, Alice Braga
Director: Mikael Hafstrom
Rating: **

Here’s yet another film on exorcism trying valiantly to fit into the horror-thriller genre and failing quite miserably to generate either thrills or scares.

The Rite toplines Anthony Hopkins as Father Lucas Trevant, an experienced exorcist trying to indoctrinate Mikael Kovack (Colin Donoghue) a mortician who has joined the seminary to escape from the tedium of the familial occupation of generations of Kovacks, currently pursued by his father (Rutger Hauer).

The story is obviously inspired by Matt Baglio’s nonfiction tome The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist and scriptwriter Michael Petroni uses key elements from the book to create this partly fictionalised work.

In the modern era there is very little scope for rites like exorcism or for beliefs in such super natural practices to sustain. So it’s quite queer that in 2007, the Vatican announced plans to re-instruct the clergy on the rite of exorcism, in the hope of installing an exorcist in every diocese worldwide. That directive becomes the take-off point for this celluloid exercise in exorcism training. Kovak is drafted by a superior who hopes to convince him of his true calling.

William Friedkin’s The Exorcist has little competition in the thrill department from this one for sure. But in terms of look and atmosphere, Mikael Hafstrom’s film is quite worthy. The narrative is far too low-key but the elegance of the visuals cannot be doubted.

For a genre of this nature, the special-effects are not flashy at all - instead a more raw effort has been put by Lenser Ben Davis in creating chilly atmospheric tension. But unfortunately the middling pace doesn’t allow for the dread to mount and the mood is never sustained.

The narrative comes close to the ridiculous when Satan assumes the form of a red-eyed donkey but Hafstrom’s contained structure manages to bring that runway passage back in tune with the rest of the narrative, slightly intensifying the tension and judiciously inserting some piquant flashbacks.

Hopkins seems to be reprising his Silence of the Lambs performance - it comes across as fake. Irish born stage actor Colin Donoghue makes a good first impression on his very first celluloid outing. Alice Braga is wasted in an underwritten part as a journalist researcher.