Where “The Rite” went wrong

The Rite

I was sitting at home trying to decide whether to see “The Rite” or “The Mechanic”, and I finally came to the conclusion that I was in the mood for something scary. From psycho cannibal to half man, half wolf, I have always thought Anthony Hopkins makes a good villain. So when I saw the trailer for “The Rite”, I was restless with anticipation of seeing him as another creepy character. I was hoping to be scared out of my seat like those trailers for the movie “Paranormal Activity”. It’s been a while since that’s happened and I thought that maybe this would be the movie. The choice of Colin O’Donoghue to play Michael Kovak, a man struggling with his belief in God, was a little puzzling. He is not a well known actor and
 unless you’ve seen him play Duke Philip of Bavaria in that one episode of the hit Showtime series “The Tudors”, you have probably never seen him before.

The movie starts off ok with Michael Kodak’s father, a Mortician, cleaning and preparing a dead woman’s body for viewing at their family Mortuary and home. Every man in Michael’s family has either become a Mortician or a Priest and it’s time for him to choose. As you probably guessed, he chose Priest. While in seminary school he struggles with his belief in God. He finally ends up in Rome Italy learning about exorcism at The Vatican. Still struggling with even the possibility of God or the supernatural, his Teacher/Priest sends him to participate in ritualistic exorcisms performed by a rundown priest, Father Lucas Trevant(Anthony Hopkins).

Because this is a true story, based on true events, I think the Director, Mikael Håfström felt that he shouldn’t go over the top with the actual exorcisms. This was a mistake. We, as the audience, want to see heads spinning and projectile vomiting in movie about exorcism. This is why we go to these movies. We want to see the possessed climbing walls in distorted ways.  Can’t a brother get a head spin, I mean come on. When we see Rosaria(Marta Gastini) spitting up large nails, I thought now we're getting somewhere. But in the end, the room full of frogs and the dreams about a horse with red eyes just didn’t do it for me. At no point in this so called horror flick did I even flinch. It was all so predictable.

Another issue I had with “The Rite” was Michael questioning his faith over and over again. It got very old, especially toward the end of the movie when the people possessed new thing about him that only he knew. I mean any skeptic would be crapping their pants at that point. In the end, this was a mediocre thriller and definitely not a horror film. My dreams of jumping out of my seat were squashed by long drawn out scenes of what do I believe, who am I. I was very disappointed.