Weekend Watch: The Pope's Exorcist, Renfield
One man battles evil, the other serves it
Image Credit: Sony Pictures
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Russell Crowe fights evil and Nicholas Hoult serves it. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite
It’s never the best sign when a studio decides not to show a movie to critics –– which is what happened to Russell Crowe’s new film, The Pope’s Exorcist in some territories, including the US. To do my due diligence, I headed to a local cinema on the film’s release day to see it.
And… oh, boy. While not entirely without merit, the film is also not going to trouble the upper echelons of the horror pantheon. Because despite a compelling real-world person on which to base its story (Father Gabriel Amorth, who spent decades battling apparently demonic forces as an exorcist working for the Vatican, but before that was a partisan fighter battling fascists, a lawyer and a journalist) the resulting film is instead a mash-up of The Exorcist and The Da Vinci Code.
Crowe is certainly appealing as Amorth, giving the story a charismatic core –– Amorth is a man who bristles against the church’s snippy councils and sometimes reacts more like a cop than a priest, kicking in doors to save demonic victims and brandishing his crucifix like it’s a Colt 45.
Yet around him, the film that director Julius Avery has built feels more like a teenager trying to make their ramped-up version of The Exorcist, bringing little that is new to the story of a possessed boy whom Amorth must help. There are the totemic elements –– crosses turning upside down, a possessed victim spouting growling insults (in the voice of The Witch’s Ralph Ineson, no less) and lots of scenes of people being tossed around like ragdolls.
But when it also dives into a dark chapter of the Catholic Church’s history (no, not that one, the other one), and into the caverns under a spooky abbey, it becomes grandiose and silly, which feels even less like a story that the real-life Amorth would have appreciated.
The Pope’s Exorcist is in UK and US cinemas now.
Image Credit: Universal Pictures
Dracula is a character who has been adapted into all sorts of formats a multitude of times. Yet Renfield manages to find a fresh way in, turning him –– in the shape of Nicolas Cage –– into the ultimate toxic boss.
It’s the latest release from the refreshed Universal stan at using its classic monsters following the disastrous attempt to copy the MCU and kick off a cinematic universe. It has already borne fruit with Leigh Whannel’s The Invisible Man and has a whole heap of fun via the horror comedy stylings of this new entry.
Nicholas Hoult brings nervy everyman energy to the title role as Robert Montague Renfield, who has served Count Dracula for many, many years and is heartily sick of the deal. Though the vampire has granted him long life and some limited access to powers (which he activates by consuming insects), he’s regretting his deal with a demonic presence.
Renfield, currently hiding out with his master in an abandoned New Orleans hospital (they find somewhere new to live after Dracula’s chaotic battle with do-gooders), attends a support group for those in toxic relationships. But of course, even there he can’t find peace and completely escape his master. And then there’s the small matter of the local crime family, led by
Shohreh Aghdashloo’s Bellafrancesca Lobo and her trouble-making son Teddy (Ben Schwartz, relishing a rare chance to be an actual baddie, even if the result is Parks & Rec’s Jean-Ralphio Saperstein gone wild and criminal).
Under the direction of Chris McKay (working from a script by Ryan Ridley, itself spawned from an idea by The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman), the movie is a blast of entertainment: funny, gory (one action moment involves Renfield tearing a henchman’s arms off and beating others with them) and wild.
Cage is in his element as Dracula, grasping the chance to play one of his favourite characters and running with it. A subplot featuring Awkwafina’s noble police officer, a moral centre in a barrel of bad apples, is perhaps less effective, but she plays well off Hoult’s scruffy, hangdog performance.
It’s stylish, goofy and has some of the most enjoyable, inventive stunt work outside of the John Wick franchise. Renfield deserves to be Universal’s next big horror (or horror-adjacent) hit.
Renfield is in UK and US cinemas now.