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<\/p>\nIt\u2019s been fifty years since the horror classic The Exorcist hit screens and scared the bejesus out of audiences. Since then there have been many other films that have delved into the demonic possession genre. The Pope\u2019s Exorcist is the latest in a long line of such films and it ticks off all the usual cliches \u2013 flickering lights, eerie noises, a possessed kid, crucifixes turned upside down, bodies thrown across the room, religious incantations, bleeding eyeballs, etc \u2013 many of which were neatly parodied in the 1990 comedy Repossessed, which starred a deadpan Leslie Nielsen and Linda Blair, the original star of The Exorcist.<\/p>\n
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The Pope\u2019s Exorcist is based on a couple of books written by Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican\u2019s official demon buster, detailing his experiences over three decades in which he reputedly performed over 70,000 exorcisms. But the team of five writers including Michael Petroni (The Book Thief), Evan Spiliotopoulos (The Huntsman: Winter\u2019s War<\/a>) and R Dean McCreary have obviously taken enormous liberties with the source material here as it unlikely that Amorth\u2019s dealing with possessed children were not as dramatic and sensationalist as depicted here.<\/p>\n The film is set in a small village in the south of Spain in 1987. The recently widowed Julia (Alex Essoe, from The Haunting of Bly Manor) moves into an old house in Italy which she has inherited with the intention of renovating the place and then selling it. She has brought along her two children, the sulking and moody teenage daughter Amy (Laurel Marsden) and young son Henry (newcomer Peter DeSouza-Feighoney, in his film debut), who are not impressed with the place. But the old house is actually a former abbey, and it also comes with a dark history which is buried in the bowels in a secret, hidden room.<\/p>\n Henry is soon possessed by an evil demon, and local priests Father Russell and Father Esquibel (Costa Rican actor Daniel Zovatto, from Don\u2019t Breathe) seek help from the Vatican to drive out the spirit. The Pope (veteran Italian star Franco Nero) sends Father Amorth to oversee the exorcism. Amorth arrives in the middle of a fierce storm riding his little Vespa. In the basement he discovers the corpse of a priest who was apparently possessed by the devil way back in 1475 at the start of the Inquisition. Amorth does battle with the demon named Asmodeus, who it seems was largely responsible for driving the brutal actions of the notorious Inquisition. It seems that Asmodeus has deliberately lured Amorth to this location in an attempt to possess him and destroy the Church from within.<\/p>\n And meanwhile the Pope has to deal with a conspiracy within the Vatican itself that brings in a hint of The Da Vinci Code. Within the Vatican itself there are many who question Father Amorth about his position and consider him a charlatan.<\/p>\n