One Of This Year's Most Unexpected Horror Hits Is Dominating Netflix
We've seen some incredible works of horror cinema come out this year, small indie movies that broke big at the box office like "Skinamarink" and its experimental filmmaking, or movies that received critical acclaim and crafted whole universes for themselves like "Talk to Me." Even blockbuster horror releases like "Evil Dead Rise" and "Scream VI" managed to surpass expectations and add new things to their respective longstanding franchises.
And then there are also movies that did not make that big of an impact originally but are finally finding an audience that sees how brilliant they are in their own way. Movies that become big hits on streaming. Movies like "The Pope's Exorcist," which is now streaming on Netflix.
Like many horror movies, especially many possession horror movies, "The Pope's Exorcist" is based on a true story. Unlike those other ones, however, this is actually true (no it isn't). Director Julius Avery tells the true and untold story of Father Gabriele Amorth, the personal exorcist of the Pope and the Vatican (who the late great William Friedkin did a whole documentary on). Amorth performed tens of thousands of exorcisms in his lifetime (though his definition of exorcism is stretched out).
While the movie is at times a rather basic possession story — family moves to a new house (or former church), youngest kid starts hearing things and gets possessed and starts acting and looking rather dirty, vomiting, and levitating from their bed until there is an exorcism — it stands out from the rest due mostly to two reasons: rather cool worldbuilding grounded in real atrocities, and a phenomenal performance from Russell Crowe as the sassiest exorcist who just doesn't give a f**k about no devil.
Look at his little scooter!
From the beginning, director Julius Avery fully leans into the silliness of the concept and its potential for silly fun. Rather than play into the tired trope of the man of the cloth that questions his faith, Crowe's Amorth is exceedingly confident in his abilities, mocking the literal king of hell and saying God will make him win no matter what.
Indeed, Crowe is not your typical exorcist, he cracks jokes, mocks the politics-obsessed cardinals by reminding them his boss is literally the head of the Church if they have a problem with him, riding around in his little scooter, asking for coffee everywhere he goes. Amorth is essentially the Spider-Man of exorcists, cracking jokes all the time in the middle of fighting a demon.
Russell Crowe has spent the last few years taking on pretty fascinating roles, and completely understanding the assignment. From "The Nice Guys," to "Unhinged" and even "Thor: Love and Thunder" before this. He embraces the absurdity of these stories to the point where I now mourn the "Gladiator 2" movie we could have got with Crowe and based on Nick Cave's bonkers original script.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition
"The Pope's Exorcist" stands out from other possession movies because of its world-building and sense of history. This is not just a movie with Easter eggs nodding at other demons like "The Conjuring" — there is still plenty of potential for a bigger universe. It starts with the reveal that the demon that is attacking the family is connected to the Spanish Inquisition, which turns out was started by an exorcist that got possessed by a demon and infiltrated the Church to tarnish its name — before the Vatican covered the whole thing up.
The film ends with the promise of Amorth and his priest sidekick joining a sort of Vatican special ops team to find evil sites around the world to fight the devil, which essentially makes this the feature-length version of "Evil," the delightful show by Robert and Michelle King that introduced a Vatican secret police whose agents fight to kill the heads of the dozens of demonic houses spread across the Earth.
Possession movies are overdone, particularly franchises, because there is little you can do in follow-up installments. But a franchise starring the Pope's own exorcist acting like Ethan Hunt, leading a crew of spies going on "Mission: Impossible" quests facing demons sounds incredible, and I'm here for it.
Even though the film didn't make a huge splash at the box office, it was a moderate success, and a sequel was recently announced. Still, this kind of movie was always destined to be big on streaming, where the cost-benefit of taking a chance on a small horror movie is lower, and the chances of a movie hitting big and spreading through word of mouth is bigger.