The Vatican Exorcisms

While the found footage genre has definitely deserved some of the hate it has gotten over the years, it angers me that films about exorcisms and the conspiracies of The Vatican, which are more uniformly awful than the former, don't seem to get the widespread hate that found footage films do. Whenever a new found footage film hits theaters, it's dismissed almost instantly of a retread of familiar ground, yet films concerning the Catholic church don't get the same sort of dismissal (perhaps because they are now appearing in less and less theaters and more on the direct-to-DVD market?)

Whatever the case, Joe Marino's The Vatican Exorcisms adds to the scrapheap of lackluster exorcism films, a genre that some thirty years ago seemed fresh and limitless, but now, is as predictable and as frightening as a child jumping out of bushes shouting "boo" in the middle of the afternoon. The film's DVD release is positioned ever-so closely to the limited theatrical release of another film titled The Vatican Tapes (unseen by me, as of now), undoubtedly to cause a sense of consumer confusion (or perhaps market saturation) of a genre of films that peaked with its first major hit in 1973 and has yet to impress on a level even remotely close to its grandfather.

This is one of those mockumentaries (fake documentaries) that tries to get you to believe what you're seeing is real footage, but because the approach (the constant iteration of showing the truth and assertion that the director and crew are making a movie) and the structure are so generic, any elements of originality are sacrificed for routine storytelling. We follow director Joe Marino as he travels to Italy with the goal of exposing the many crimes of The Vatican, including the disappearance of young women, Satanic rituals, orgies, and exorcisms, all of which the church has worked to cover up. By his side is exorcism-expert Padre Luigi, who helps Marino piece together the plethora of paranormal activity that occurs and how The Vatican has managed to be so secretive when it comes to profiling these incidents.

The film does find itself a tad unsettling during some of the Satanic rituals because of the way Marino and his crew choose to capture them. The scenes themselves don't always come equipped with a payoff, and sometimes, for extended periods of time, we are voyeurs into the noneventful rituals, passively waiting for something to occur while there is limited dialog and an eerie presence of silence. This effect is quite stimulating, actually; a relieving break from the horror films that constantly feel the need to work towards something rather than having a more liberal structure to showcase their events.

The effect, while admittedly unsettling for the first few scenes, becomes a grating one very quickly, even for a film that barely qualifies as a feature (without credits, the film is roughly seventy-four minutes). Even with this concise runtime, The Vatican Exorcisms plods along from one ridiculous, foreseeable scene to the next; how many films do we need to see that involve innocent people contorting themselves on the floor of a church in front of numerous bystanders, and how many of them do we need to see that are so theatrical they cannot even bear the element of being believable.

Exorcism films are films, from what I've seen, with no staying power whatsoever. Slasher films give you an uneasiness at night, films about wild animals make you weary of the woods, and films that go beyond the realm of reality into your subconscious make lying down to to go to a sleep a bit more difficult. Exorcism films are so conventionally made and arbitrarily concocted that there's little to make you fear other than the fact that you're losing time by watching yet another one, and Joe Marino's The Vatican Exorcisms is a result of undisciplined and unambitious mockumentary fluff.

Directed by: Joe Marino.

Honestly, lots and lots, of very blurred shots, of what I can only describe as some of the most boring "possessed" people. Has the Devil got nothing better to do than inhabit the mentally ill and the old?

Or found footage or shaky cam or whatever else you want to call it. One thing is for sure: It is low budget and it shows. That doesn't mean that some of the "exorcisms" does not look interesting in itself. But it feels like an episodic (and is kind of build that way too) TV show, where you get the exorcism of the week segment ... over and over again. Until the last one of course ... Not that the end of the movie itself will satisfy people either.

If you give the filmmakers a break for the low budget, I'm not sure if you'll give them one for the weak structure this has. Also the camera shaking can make you dizzy or at least annoy and unnerve you a lot. It is called horror, but sometimes that "works" for all the wrong reasons in this movie ...

Accompanied by Padre Luigi, a true exorcist, Joe Marino travels to the south of Italy, a place where the sacred and profane have always lived together, where Christian rituals are inextricably linked to the pagan ones.

First, a brief note on exorcism films: whether or not there were films about exorcism prior to "The Exorcist", that film set a benchmark that all others must now contend with. There are two ways to approach this: try to make a better film, or try to make a different film. The first approach almost always fails. The second one fails as well, though slightly less often. Wisely, this film took that second route.

And there is some good stuff in here: filming in Italy was a good idea, and using the stolen papers of Pope Benedict as a reference was also clever. Even though few people are going to believe this is a real documentary, they set up a solid foundation to work from. Inject enough fact into your fiction, and people are going to be intrigued.

There is, however, also bad stuff: mostly the faux documentary style. Again, if it could be passed off as real, that might be interesting. But it never reaches that level. And then it ends up in the same place as many other exorcism films from the past five years, several of which have used POV or a documentary style. And few do it well. The only good one in recent memory is "Grace: The Possession" (2014), though even "The Last Exorcism" (2010) had its merits.

This is not going to go down as a great film or even one of the better exorcism films. While it has good intentions and the creators had good ideas, the execution falls fall short of the mark.

In reality, this film is like a documentary. In the middle of the film, he starts to get more boring and "very forced". Joey tries to make a suspense air in some scenes that don't worked for me. This film could be better if Joe invest more in a "found footage" or a realy mockumentary, like Lake Mungo or Cropsey.