Exorcist brings ham, not horror

January 28, 2011|Ty Burr, Globe Staff

There’s truly a satanic force at work in the logy exorcism thriller “The Rite,’’ and it goes by the name of Anthony Hopkins. The august Oscar-winner and Knight of the British Empire isn’t the film’s star — that would be the handsome but particle-board dull Colin O’Donoghue as Michael Kovak, a junior priest and devoted skeptic — but Hopkins takes possession of “The Rite’’ with wit, impatience, and, when it counts, a stentorian bellow the late Richard Burton might have envied. You can almost hear one generation’s greatest hambone saluting his heir across the great divide.

As directed by Mikael Håfström (whose 2005 Jennifer Aniston melodrama “Derailed’’ was a lot more fun), the film takes its sweet time getting going. The opening 30 minutes are a series of back stories that lead Father Michael to Rome and exorcism training with the “unorthodox’’ Welsh priest Father Lucas (Hopkins). First Michael has to survive growing up with a mortician dad played by Rutger Hauer; then he has to get through seminary aided by a Father Superior (Toby Jones) with a knack for causing auto accidents; once in Rome, the doctrinaire Father Xavier (Ciaran Hinds) steers the young doubter to his true mentor. So many skilled scenery chewers in supporting roles, and they still can’t make up for the void in the center that is O’Donoghue.

Eventually “The Rite’’ settles into its real story, with Hopkins playing a sort of shaggy Catholic Yoda leading his young Luke Baal-swatter through the basics of demonic pest-control. Bringing a young, very pregnant Italian girl (Marta Gastini) into his moldy sanctum, Father Lucas mutters a few words, taps her on the forehead, and — hey, presto — she’s cured. “What did you expect?’’ he asks the bewildered Father Michael. “Spinning heads? Pea soup?’’

Well, yes, but not to worry, the special effects break out before long, and the girl gets to run the gamut of icky possession as the movies have understood it since 1973’s “The Exorcist.’’ “The Rite’’ is more interested in creepy atmosphere than full-on horror, though, and while the slow, patient plod of its story line is interesting at first, the unvarying pace turns funereal and ultimately vexing. Nor does the appearance of an evil mule crank up the suspense to acceptable levels.