The Rite-review

I'll eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

            Gosh I’d love to say this movie is worth it.  It does have some decent points so I’ll start with the good things about it.  The acting is decent.  Anthony Hopkins is top notch and I really think that Marta Gastini did a really great job as the possessed pregnant girl Rosaria.  Others were very decent and it would have been a very good movie if it had been written differently.

            Yes, the script is this movie’s enemy and it sucks the life out scenes in ways that should be taut and thrilling.  When they have not added a creepy image they try to toss in a jump scare in the cheapest ways as filler, such as a cat running across the screen.  That is very lazy.  A lot of the dialogue comes off as stagnant and trite. 

The money is in the....ughhhhh.

            For example, at one point a pudgy Father Matthew wants to chat with Michael at night so he chases after him in the street calling after him.  Having his head up his ass his leg clips a girl on a bicycle and causes her to swerve into traffic and get hit by a truck.  The next day he says “I can’t help but think that this was somehow my fault.”  ASSHOLE! It’s a great deal your fault.  If you would have looked both ways that girl would have been alive. The only think your could have done that would have contributed more to her death is to drive the fucking truck that killed her.  They could have thought of a million things that would have been better to say.

            There are all sorts of insane things like that that the script is just spewing out.  Matthew is studying to be a Priest because he thinks it’s the best way to get free college and get out of his family business which happens to be a mortuary.  Frankly I don’t know what he is bitching about.  Morticians make bank.  Plus considering he obviously has problems with faith maybe he should have considered the military and its college programs.  I’m just saying there ARE options beyond mortician and priesthood which is what he literally tells a friend of his are his only choices.

And the Winona Ryder in "Beetle Juice" lookalike contest winner is...

            I also have some questions for the director.  If there is supposed to be a demonic, red-eyed mule and you show the audiences a horse do you think no one will know the difference?  Is the Catholic Church so hard up for Priest’s that it will blackmail a man to stay in even though he clearly has lost his faith?  Is there a quota I am not aware of?  Seems odd that demons can often summon great powers but usually can’t (there is one exception in this movie) do something as simple as rip the bindings holding them in a chair.

            Clearly I am nitpicking as I am wont to do.  Frankly I thought the story was mediocre and even with the good acting it probably wouldn’t be enough to make it a movie worth seeing in theaters.  Rent it if you are curious but certainly don’t expect it to be scary or even particularly clever.  If you have seen any other exorcism movie then you’ve seen this one before.