The Rite
Blu-ray | DVD | On Demand
Directed by Mikael Hafstrom
Starring Anthony Hopkins, Colin O’Donoghue, Alice Braga
Release Date: May 17, 2011

The ability to actually frighten has been celebrated in very few films over the last decade. There has been a succession of horror films that induce nausea and sickness rather than soul-tormenting images that plague the brain long after the nightmarish vision has vanished from the screen. To come in contact with true horror one needs to dismiss all films in the Saw franchise, along with films such as Hostel and Turistas. These types of movies construct their entire existence around disgusting images of decapitations, the tearing of human limbs, and the devouring of human body parts. All of this is perverse, lacking any ingenuity that is necessary when trying to craft a potent and adequately effective horror film. Horror films with a singular reliance on gore wind up producing nothing of substance or distinction. They just exist — and maybe they are content with that existence — as being a film with a perverse fascination with violence.

The Rite
Directed by Mikael Hafstrom
Starring Anthony Hopkins, Colin O’Donoghue, Marta Gastini
Rated PG-13
Release date: January 28, 2011

An excessively verbose film, The Rite clumsily observes exorcism as being either a satanic occurrence or a descendant of a psychological one that can warrant scientific explanations. It is the credulous of one belief always trying to sway and convince the incredulous of the other belief. We’ve seen the skeptic and the believer clash numerous times before in cinema, and this film continues the redundancy of such an argument.
 
In a weird by yet mildly surprising way, The Rite, directed by 1408 director Mikael Hafstrom and adapted from a true story based on Matt Baglio’s book The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, relies heavily on such intense arguments rather than having a clinging dependence on the unpleasant and abhorrent images that tend to go along with films depicting exorcisms. Films such as the horror classic The Exorcist and even the fairly recent and slightly nerve-tingling The Exorcism of Emily Rose had an intensifying inclination, even perverse in some instances, to dwell emphatically on the tortured subjects of the devil. Scarcely would a scene present any relief for the audience.