Dan Stevens and Al Pacino need some quick cash.
So what was this film? The possession sub-genre frankly put is used up, there is not a lot of new ideas there and by and large it is like the later stages of the slasher sub-genre, before it was reinvented with Scream, and this may be the sub-genre at its most generic.
You have Dan Stevens as a priest who doesn’t seem to understand how exorcism works despite being involved in it, and who has clear sexual tension with a nun which is addressed but not in a satisfying way. Worse yet there is a scene wherein Patricia Heaton who plays a Mother Superior talks down to Steven’s priest and says she is done being told what to do by men who aren’t even half as holy as her. This scene was the moment I knew the film was getting a low score. This is the catholic church in the 1920s, attitudes like that exclaimed by Heaton’s character would be enough to have them thrown out of the Church. The idea that in period a Mother Superior would have dared speak to a priest like that is laughable.
Another weird thing about the film is the way it is edited, there are scenes that feel as though the camera work and editing is trying to ape something like The Office rather than be appropriate for a horror film.
Overall, this is one of the lowest points yet for the possession sub-genre.
1/5
Pros.
Pacino is laughably bad.
Cons.
Stevens is phoning it in
The girl power nun
The editing
The fact that it doesn’t have an original bone in its body
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