REVIEW: THE RITE

Wow. That's not how the trailer sold it. At all. I've only watched it once but it seemed very bombastic, for lack of a better word. Still an energized Hopkins is always a good thing.

If you're going to be a bad movie, you might as well wallow in the cheese. The Rite doesn't manage to do this at all until the last twenty minutes, and it's far too little too late at that point. There's a place for contemplative slow paced exorcism movies, but only if they're good. This was just a deathly bore, one of those movies that actively dares you to fall asleep. I haven't disliked a movie this much in a long time. In fact, I would call it considerably worse than Season of the Witch, if that tells you anything.

How do you make a movie with Hopkins, Ciaran Hinds, Rutger Hauer, and Toby Jones, set in Rome, about fighting Satan, and have it come out this bad? The lead actor hurts it a lot.

We definitely saw two different movies, Arjen. I actually rather enjoyed it. Yeah, there were slow parts, the hallucinations and all that were a bit heavyhanded, but I liked the slow burn it had going. It was like a class, really with the final exam being 'how much scenery can Anthony Hopkins chew'. The answer is a shocking amount. It's not a great movie but for what it is, I was engaged the entire time. Could it have benefitted from perhaps a more recognizable lead? Sure, but O'Donoghue was a perfect cipher for the audience, I found it very easy to relate to him.

It also taught me that Rutger Hauer and Toby Jones need to be in a movie together. Like...yesterday.

Yeah, it just didn't pan out for me. I did enjoy the silly Hopkins stuff. "Your father says Hello..."HELL'-O!!!!" 

Just watched this, great looking but kind of a failure for an exorcist flick.

I did like the first few bits upstairs with Rosaria, very restrained scenes for the genre, had a fresh kind of creepiness because of what they didn't show vs what was expected. The possession scenes went from creepy to hilarious though, when they had Hopkins wearing a bathrobe in public and slapping some kid, then later going full Deadite.

"WOW, COOL, AWESOME, WHATEVER, DUDE!!!"