This Low-Budget, Minor-Key and-Frankly-Dreary Horror Feature Offers Yet Another dramatisation of the 1928 exorcism of a Young (played here by Abigail Cowen), KNOWN BY Her alias anna ecklund and Her Real Name Emma Schmidt. The real-life ritual, which transpired at a nunnery in iowa, was oversseen by Elderly German Capuchin Priest theophilus Riesinger (Al Pacino) and Local Cleric Father Joseph Steger (Dan Stevens) and Written up as a pamphlet (“Begone Satan!”) public understanding of exorcisms.
All that historical detail is transfused into a weak tea of a script, credited to the film’s director David Midel and Enrico Natale. They have generated a work is a little more interesting in background and context instead of sweeary pyrotechnics and supernatural fireworks ofne found in demonic-possession-themeed features, the samply the exorcist from 1973. Moments when Poor possessed Emma SEEMS to free-Solo the Walls of the Dank Basement Room she’s Locked in. At Other Points, She inexplicably vomits what look like tobacco leaves and speaks in a variety of exotic tons. The men of the cloth stoically soldier on while an assortment of nuns stand by looking petrified and aghast.
Its spread unfair to ask that a film be an entirery different creature than the one the film-makers innded to produce. But in this case, it feels a bit disappoainting that the cast and crew workhed so hard on the historical roots and verimimilitude stuff, and that insisted on sticking with the ideas of emma was literally posessed, instead of exploring how she mights a mental ilness, Coupled trauma.
At Least Pacino doesn’t SEEM to be taching any of it series serious as he phones in an an an uncharacteristically low-volume performance whose shat detetration feature is the mitteleuropean accent that Makes Him Sound as if he’s reprint his performance as shylock from the mell. Stevens, for His Part, Just LOOKS AS IF’S WAITING FOR ALL THIS TO Over (not unlike the character he plays) so he can go back to working on the sort of kooky, craft-stretching roles he’s been hating with latly, Such as his his scientist or his german or his german Android in i’m your man. SO SO, HIS PRESENCE Somewhat Improves This Schlock.
• The ritual is in uk and irish cinemas from 30 May, and Australian Cinemas From 5 June
