The whole exorcism theme has been to death in movies, and The Rite is one more reason it should be shelved for a while. No movie has been able to live up to the grand-daddy of them all, The Exorcist (1973).  The Rite doesn’t even try.  It’s an embarrassment to the genre.

The tale is based on the true story of Father Gary Thomas who serves as an official exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose. This is presumably the tale of how he came to be an exorcist, and it is dreadfully dull. Journalist Matt Baglio chronicled Thomas’s time in Rome in the book “The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist”.  I’ve got to imagine the book was far more compelling than the movie.

Director Mikael Håfström (1408, Derailed) centers the movie around fictional character Michael Kovak (playing the role based on Thomas) and his crisis of faith, which he must quickly sort out before, you know, he is possessed by the devil. Flashbacks show that  Kovak was raised in the family mortuary, à la Six Feet Under. He has a tense relationship with his father (Rutger Hauer) and after his mother dies, he decides to flee the family business and attend seminary school.

I pretty much watch any horror movie I can get my hands on, and have been doing so for most of my adult life.  I can only recall a handful of movies that genuinely scared me.  Add this one to the list.

For three-fourths of the running time of the film I was literally biting my knuckles like a little kid.  The movie scared me, pure and simple, and it is rated PG-13!

Whether you find the movie scary or not likely hinges on whether you find the subject matter convincing.  If you don’t believe that demonic possessions are possible, I doubt you will like the movie, and will probably find it silly.  However, if you believe that this really could happen,  The Last Exorcism will scare you to death.

The movie begins with a documentary crew interviewing a minister named Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian.) Cotton has been  groomed since childhood to be an evangelist, following in his father’s footsteps.

He  has gained notoriety with his effusive showmanship.  He frequently employs magic tricks and props to whip the congregation into a spiritual frenzy.

His convincing delivery and tendency to employ  theatrics make him a natural to perform “exorcisms.”  After years of jilting desperate people out of their hard earned cash, he has decided to quit performing exorcisms, and has agreed to take the documentary crew on one last exorcism, to expose the fakery involved in the profession.