The Rite Review: Not So Righteous

Going to the movies can be quite a holy experience. Waiting in line to get your ticket stub, the aroma of freshly popped popcorn fills your nostrils, and your mouth becomes dry, itching for a taste of the cherry Pepsi that you will soon suck down as if it were the tears of God. After trotting into the auditorium, you shuffle your way into the perfect seat, resting your legs on the ledge that separates you and the massive screen-like portal that will take you into another realm. Staring forward, you gasp in amazement as you take in one of the truly great cinematic experiences of your lifetime. For days, your mind is filled with wondrous thoughts about what you have just witnessed. But of course, quite the opposite experience can also happen. You can go see a movie like The Rite and want to rip your own eyeballs out. The popcorn will be stale, the soda will taste like piss, and you’ll want to drop kick the emo-looking dwarf, that served you at the concession stand, into the nacho display case. You find your seat between two sets of teens who can’t stop gossiping about the current teenybopper television program of the week (which stars a Guido looking vampire who scored sharpest fangs of the evening), and what you watch will make you wish you were exorcised from the theater. However, you still leave wondering what you just witnessed, and why you wasted your time and money on it.

It doesn’t come much more generic and predictable than The Rite, folks. We follow Michael Kovak, a young priest (Colin O’Donoghue), who is possessed by the “bad acting demon,” as he travels to Rome and learns about exorcism from Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins), who is possessed by the “I just want a paycheck demon.” Young Kovak’s struggle with his faith is the focal point of the film. Through a series of poorly done flashbacks, director Mikael Håfstromattempts to explain to us why Kovak is not comfortable with his religion. His mother passed away when he was young, his father was an eerie looking mortician, and he grew up in a funeral home full of dead things. Despite all these attempts to create a solid lead character, Hafstrom failed to recognize two things. First off, you should not use flashbacks to force feed the background of your main character to the audience. Second, to have a successful movie, you need to have an interesting lead. It’s as if the director knew his main character was unable to stand on his own, so he gave him crutches in the form of nostalgic recalls to help steady his performance.

In spite of the numerous amount of evidence that proves the existence of demonic possession, such as a girl spitting up nails that are comparable to the size of Lo Pan’s finger nails from Big Trouble in Little China, this dummy Kovak still doesn’t believe in the devil. Meanwhile, some little 12-year-old twerp, who is possessed, predicts that Kovak’s father will die, and when he does die, and Father Lucas becomes possessed by a demon, Kovak scratches his head and finally sees the headline on the spinning newspaper that reads, “HEY IDIOT, MAYBE YOU SHOULD START BELIEVING IN GOD AND THE DEVIL NOW.” In the anticlimactic final scene, Kovak regains his faith, exorcises the demon of Baal from Father Lucas and everything is just dandy.

The movie moves along very slowly from points A to B. Usually there are some twists or turns that keep you engaged, but that is not the case with The Rite. There are two such scenes, however, that I need to look back and laugh at…which is not a good thing, this being a horror movie and all. Number one, a troubled Michael Kovak is walking the streets of Rome, head down and not sure what to believe in, when suddenly he looks up and sees the golden arches before him. No, not a sign from God but the actual golden arches from McDonalds. A moment later, a more satisfied Kovak is standing in the street with a café latte in his hand. Yes, there is what essentially adds up to a McDonald’s commercial in the middle of this movie. It is kind of pathetic that nowadays not only do you have to watch ads before a movie; you also have to see them in the movie. At least get creative with it. Have the priest go in to get his coffee, but instead of there being a normal Italian girl dispensing all the treats, there should be a possessed Ronald McDonald reigning hell on everyone, climbing up the walls and spitting scorching hot hash browns out of his clown face. Then, after he exorcises the devil out of Ronald, Kovak can get paid in double cheeseburgers. Now that’s a scene I’m interested in watching.

The number two awful scene in this film is when Kovak first meets Father Lucas, and they are attempting to exorcise a demon out of a young pregnant girl. In the middle of what should have been one of the more pivotal scenes in the film, Father Lucas’ cell phone rings, and he motions for a totally inexperienced Kovak to take over. Father Lucas gets on his phone, stands off to the side and says something like “I can’t really talk right now. I’m in the middle of something.” What kind of movie is this anyhow, horror or moronic comedy? What I would have done was allowed the audience to hear the voice on the other end of this phone call, and it would have went something like this: “Hey priest, it’s the devil here. Thanks for being an idiot and answering your phone, ’cause right now I am eating this girl’s soul that you’re supposed to be saving.”

I think by now you know my overall impression of this movie. I would say it’s good enough to see when it comes out on DVD, but I would be lying. Don’t even waste your time. The Rite is basically Signswithout aliens and Mel Gibson. Even the last scene of Kovak putting his priest attire on and walking into his confessional booth reminded me of Mel Gibson’s character, whose faith had also just been restored, standing in his clerical clothing in front of his mirror. I just wish that a few minutes into The Rite, the priests could have figured out that all they had to do was throw water onto those who were possessed to cast out the demons, thus saving me two hours of my life.

For another take, read “The Rite Review: Who Rites This Shit?” by Keith Kuramoto

Photos courtesy of IMDbPro and New Line Cinema.