There are crucifixes everywhere, sometimes more than one on a single wall, and if there are no crucifixes to be had, then a statuette of a saint can invariably be found gazing down reprovingly at all the human goings-on. Yet the film still feels the need to pummel the viewer with stock material to make the same point. That alone would be more than enough to suggest that the path of the exorcist is a dark one. Even Rome, one of the most colorful cities of the world, becomes overcast and stormy shortly after Michael’s arrival. There are only two lighting schemes: dark and darker. Like many overwrought horror movies, “The Rite” relies on redundant visual cues to signal the psychological mood. Ironically, because the film constantly falls back upon horror clichés-enlivened but emphasized by genre master Anthony Hopkins’s participation-it accomplishes the exact opposite, reinforcing the very perceptions the film was intended to combat. The book, and by extension the film, was intended to challenge the negative stereotypes about exorcism created and perpetuated by contemporary culture and cinema. The film is based on the book “The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist” by journalist Matt Baglio, who shadowed an American Catholic priest in Rome as he took a course at a Vatican-affiliated university in order to become an exorcist. In Mikael Håfström’s “The Rite,” a troubled young seminarian named Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue) travels to Italy and turns to the practice of exorcism under the tutelage of the renegade Father Lucas Trevant (Anthony Hopkins).
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