There are two excellent horror films currently playing in theaters. The first is “The Pope’s Exorcist” which is a fictionalized story of a real life Vatican Exorcist. A very good horror film. I am a fan of horror films as the genre takes Christianity seriously and Exorcism movies serve as a warning about evil and the devil.
The greatest of these films is William Friedkin’s 1973 masterpiece “The Exorcist”.This film is nowhere near as good but it is a serious look at the nature of evil. Of course, the Christian faith looks good. One thing cannot be denied, horror cinema does not go woke.
A second film is “Evil Dead Rising”, a reboot of Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” films. Unlike the remake of the 1982 original ten years ago, this is quite good. It is scary and suspenseful with likable characters.
The original Evil Dead spawned two sequels “Evil Dead 2 Dead by Dawn” and “Army of Darkness” along with the aforementioned 2013 remake, and a television series,”Ash vs Evil Dead”. The trilogy and the series featured the great Bruce Campbell as the hero.
Campbell does not appear in this one, but the film manages to stand on its own. This film plays tribute to the Campbell films while standing out as an entirely fresh concept. Only criticism is one of the demons too closely resembles a demon from the 2018 masterpiece “Hereditary”.
Also, the opening and concluding parts of the film are thankfully brief. They did not go with the rest of the film which is a great horror film. This film successfully resisted the temptation to go woke.
The hero of the film is a woman but the film did not beat the audience with that fact, unlike “Terminator Dark Fate”.This is an excellent horror film that successfully keeps the Evil Dead franchise alive. A straight forward horror film returning to its roots and no politics!
“The Pope’s Exorcist” revives the exorcism genre which began to decline in recent years. Horror cinema is alive and well and thankfully not woke. A great way to escape the turmoil of the world for a couple of hours.
2 replies on “At The Movies”
Hmmm, I may check out ‘The Pope’s Exorcist’, I like good horror genre films. The original Exorcist flic was well done, the few after that were less so. We’ll see how this compares? As for ‘Evil Dead Rising’, I’d love to see Bruce Campbell or Ted Raimi (Sam’s brother) appear in it-I loved them both from the ‘Xena-the Warrior Princess!’ series. But maybe the film carries itself OK without them? I’ll have to check it out.
Bruce Campbell is always good. This movie however was scarier because he was not in it. The movie was more disturbing because he was not there as the hero. Definitely a good movie to see.
Also, the Pope’s Exorcist is very good as well.