THE RITE

Michael Kovak, having just finished high school, must choose between continuing the family funeral business or entering the seminary to follow the path of faith. The boy takes the second path but it is precisely faith that he lacks, so one of his superiors, in order to avoid his resignation, advises him to enroll in an exorcism course in Rome. After some resistance, Michael accepts and is paired with Father Lucas, a famous Welsh exorcist. Initially, the unorthodox methods of the exorcist tend to push Michael even further towards skepticism, but after some cases of demonic possession in which he participates firsthand, his certainties begin to waver. The Devil seems to have definitely come back into fashion. In Hollywood and beyond, there must have been a real "calling" for the demonic/exorcism genre, especially considering that in the last year, persecuting demons have terrorized quiet families in "Paranormal Activity" and "Paranormal Activity 2" and cases of demonic possession treated in an unconventional manner have been at the center of "Rec 2" and "The Last Exorcism." With "The Rite," a new appointment with Evil directed by Swedish Mikael Hafstrom, we are definitely in more classic territories, where the struggle between Good and Evil is described with a language closer to the iconic "The Exorcist" rather than to the experiments (now conventions) of the mockumentary. As often happens in the horror genre, at the beginning of the film there is the threatening statement "Based on true events," which in an exorcism film equates to a declaration of "scare guaranteed," and in fact Hafstrom ("1408") a couple of times hits the mark, especially in depicting the case of possession of the pregnant girl that Michael and Father Lucas are working on. But are the truly events really such? It is journalistic documentation, more precisely behind "The Rite" there is a book by Matt Baglio, "True Story of a Modern Exorcist," in which the journalist has reported in great detail some of his investigations into cases of demonic possession treated by the priest Gary Thomas. In the film, the names are changed and naturally the whole thing is romanticized, resulting in a screenplay (by Micahel Petroni) structured in the most classic way, with winks towards pure horror, made of incarnate demons and disturbing dream visions. But there is something in "The Rite" that doesn't quite convince, at least not a more secular audience, and that is the pro-Catholic approach that at a certain point becomes preponderant. The film starts from an interesting point of view, that of a boy who, to escape the squalor of a pre-programmed life, decides to "try" to become a priest without having the vocation at all. Michael's journey is made of doubts and uncertainties, the boy always leans towards a scientific and rational explanation for everything and counters every symptom of demonic possession with a credible medical and psychiatric theory. As happens in practically every film of the genre, the skeptical protagonist is forced to fight with the evidence of the facts that would seem to give reason to the supernatural origin of the events, up to a total conversion to faith, the only weapon to defeat evil. This is known, from "The Exorcist" to "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," through "Stigmata" and "Lost Souls," the rule is always the same: the struggle with Evil that makes those who have lost it or never had it find faith again. Let's say that "The Rite" sometimes emphasizes this aspect too much, charges it to the point and then shouts it with all its might until it becomes the real driving theme. As mentioned, "The Rite" nevertheless possesses a certain effectiveness in fitting into the exorcism genre, it does so without particular innovations but nevertheless has the merit of being interesting for the story told and engaging in the atmosphere it manages to create. Much of the credit also goes to the leaden Rome that serves as the backdrop to the deeds of the protagonists, a Rome unable to escape some typically American stereotypes (the traffic, the shouting traffic warden, the usual postcard locations) but particularly suggestive, almost Gothic. Against this backdrop, actors who are good and convincing move, Colin O'Donoghue ("The Tudors"), who plays Michael Kovak, Alice Braga ("Predators"), who is the journalist Angelina, and above all Anthony Hopkins ("The Wolfman"), who portrays Father Lucas in an original and over-the-top way. In the background there are also Rutger Hauer ("The Hitcher"), Marta Gastini ("Io & Marilyn"), Maria Grazia Cucinotta ("The Postman") and Giampiero Ingrassia ("Ti stramo"). Against the canons of the genre, "The Rite" appears more effective in the preparatory part, when the Devil manifests himself timidly leaving doubts, rather than in the exorcistic climax at the end, too verbose and at times unnecessarily gaudy. For the series "the devil is in the details." In conclusion, "The Rite" presents itself as a good film to be added to the exorcism genre, capable of entertaining and interesting fans of the genre. It lacks an originality capable of making it stand out from the crowd, but the temerarious clerical extremism and the singular figure of Father Lucas could become its trademarks in the years to come.