Ghost Team One (2013)

"Two roommates deathly afraid of ghosts both fall in love with a girl who believes their home is haunted."

I don't know why everyone is calling "Ghost Team One" a "comedy". It isn't funny, and it doesn't even have a particularly happy ending. What it does have is lots of awkwardness and the same atmosphere as the American version of "The Office" (which also isn't funny), and of course, a hot chick (or two) to ogle.

"Ghost Team One" is essentially another completely unneccessary "Paranormal Activity" parody which brings the number of such abominations up to an unlucky 13. How and why this has become a subgenre in itself is undoutedly due to the YouTube generation who can't seem to get enough of webcams, shakycams, and mediocrity. For those of us who prefer a real movie, these faux found footage movies are mostly an annoying waste of time.

There are a couple of neat effects in "Ghost Team One" which you don't often see in a glorified YouTube video like this, but it isn't a horror movie by any stretch of the imagination either. In fairness, though, I don't think it was ever intended to be. It's not "found footage horror" per se that this movie is lampooning but the whole "amateur-looking footage" subgenre in general. Even YouTube gets targetted!

The downfall with this, however, is that "Ghost Team One" is as tame as its targets when it comes to the adult situations: Punches are pulled everywhere, e.g. pornographic images on a bedroom wall are pixellated, and the "jokes" (if you can call them that) are little more than schoolboyish. Think Benny Hill but less creepy with it. For a movie which uses the promise of "horny ghosts" as its selling point (especially as the only ghost in it is supposed to have been a Vietnamese prostitute!), it's very disappointing.

Two guys I've never heard of and Fernanda Romero.

As I have no sense of humour when it comes to comedy-horror movies, spoofs or otherwise, I hate to say it, but I was slightly entertained by "Ghost Team One" in a low-rent "Men Behaving Badly" (British version, naturally) way. It's well written, the drama is nicely done, and the characters are stupidly amiable but harmless enough. Once you get used to the awful camerawork, the whole purpose of "Ghost Team One" is only an excuse to lust over Fernanda Romero anyway. If Fernanda wasn't in it, I doubt that I would have made it to the end.

Fernanda Romero (who keeps her real first name and clothes on throughout) steals every scene she's in to such an extent that "Ghost Team One" is best described as her "vehicle". If anyone else involved in this movie is deluded enough to think otherwise, they need to grab themselves a reality check next time they go to 7-Eleven for their taquitos and slushies, and understand that, apart from a few infantilised adults (who were born in the '80s and '90s) and their friends, the majority of people who will eventually buy this movie on DVD or Blu-ray are just going to skip to the parts with Fernanda in and crack open another box of tissues. Yes, she really is that hot!

Putting the novelty value of "Ghost Team One" as a "latino" movie aside, since I often tend to overrate any kind of Spanish or Mexican movie even when they are filmed in Los Angeles, I don't recommend this one. I'll give everybody credit for having a go, but "Ghost Team One" would have been better as a series of webisodes.

Fernanda Romero is the centre of attention.

Constantine (2005)

"Constantine tells the story of irreverent supernatural detective John Constantine, who has literally been to hell and back."

What the Hell is wrong with Roger Ebert? He only gave "Constantine" 1.5 stars out of 5 and then spent 90% of his review retelling the story in his own words. Pretty lame stuff, but he's already earned a small fortune by leeching from people with the ability to actually make films so what does he care? Probably about as much as I don't care for anything he has to say. Just to do something different on my blog though, I'm going to go through his "negative Nancy" criticism of "Constantine" and refute it.

Let's see how Roger begins his critique:

No, "Constantine" is not part of a trilogy including "Troy" and "Alexander." It's not about the emperor at all, but about a man who can see the world behind the world, and is waging war against the scavengers of the damned. There was a nice documentary about emperor penguins, however, at Sundance this year. The males sit on the eggs all winter long in like 60 degrees below zero.

Hmmmm, nobody thinks "Contantine" is about the Roman emperor who created Catholicism as the vessel to carry the word of God and control the unruly masses. Most people don't have a Classical education and have never even heard of him. Those who do also know that Constantine the Great was emperor from 306 to 337 A.D. and isn't even from the same period as either "Troy" or "Alexander" (which are only a couple of thousand years apart themselves). No, nobody expects "Constantine" to be part of a sword and sandals trilogy, we all know that it's based on a comicbook which we've never read. As for the penguins, what do they have to do with anything?

Keanu Reeves plays Constantine as a chain-smoking, depressed demon-hunter who lives above a bowling alley in Los Angeles. Since he was a child, he has been able to see that not all who walk among us are human. Some are penguins. Sorry about that. Some are half-angels and half-devils. Constantine knows he is doomed to hell because he once tried to kill himself, and is trying to rack up enough frames against the demons to earn his way into heaven.

Actually, Roger, none of them are penguins and you aren't funny. Thanks for retelling the story though because we never would have worked that out by watching the movie ourselves. By the way, "chain-smoking" is when you light a fresh cigarette with the smoldering butt of the previous one. Constantine never does that anywhere, he likes flicking his Zippo lighter open far too much.

There is a scene early in the movie where Constantine and his doctor look at his X-rays, never a good sign in a superhero movie. He has lung cancer. The angel Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) tells him, "You are going to die young because you've smoked 30 cigarettes a day since you were 13." Gabriel has made more interesting announcements. Constantine has already spent some time in hell, which looks like a post-nuclear Los Angeles created by animators with a hangover. No doubt it is filled with carcinogens.

More storytelling? I thought Roger Ebert was some kind of great movie critic not a synopsis writer. Oh dear. "Constantine" is not a superhero movie, it's a supernatural action movie/comicbook adaptation with a huge $100,000,000 budget.

Tilda Swinton is perfectly cast as an angel, really looks the androgynous part, and is completely disturbing in a "Should I fancy her or be terrified of her?" way. It's probably her most iconic role and Roger Ebert dismisses her with one misquoted line. Gah! Constantine smoked from the age of 15 not 13.

As for the "post-nuclear Los Angeles" jibe, that's exactly what it was meant to look like. It's all explained during the "Making of" featurettes on the DVD. "Animators with a hangover?" I doubt it, but all that hard work coding images probably gave a few of them eye-strain and headaches. You should try it for yourself one day, Roger, instead of stuffing your fat face with popcorn. None of it looks bad to me or over 900 reviewers on the IMDb who think the effects are amazing.

The half-angels and half-devils are earthly proxies in the war between God and Satan. You would think that God would be the New England Patriots of this contest, but apparently there is a chance that Satan could win. Constantine's lonely mission is to track down half-demons and cast them back to the fires below. Like Blade, the vampire-killer, he is surprisingly optimistic, considering he is one guy in one city dealing on a case-by-case basis, and the enemy is global.

Yeah, we know. Why don't you just tell us the whole story, Rog? Sure, Constantine is a bit like "Blade", so what? He's not black or a half-vampire. He doesn't even look like Sting or come from Liverpool like his comicbook form. What's the point? His optimism is out of place? He's actually rather pragmatic for a "superhero". Wait. Isn't Constantine supposed to be "depressed" according to the second paragraph of the "review"? "Depressed" and "optimistic"? How does that work?

We also have no idea what the sports reference is to because we're movie fans and couldn't care less about grown men being overpaid thousands of times more than a doctor earns just to fight like little babies over a bag of air on a field. If you are going to use an analogy, make it one that people understand.

Constantine has a technical advisor named Beeman (Max Baker), who lives in the ceiling of the bowling alley among the pin-spotting machines, and functions like Q in the James Bond movies. Here he is loading Constantine with the latest weaponry: "Bullet shavings from the assassination attempt on the Pope, holy water from the river of Jordan, and, you'll love this, screech beetles." The screech beetles come in a little matchbox. "To the fallen," Max explains, "the sound is like nails on a blackboard." Later there is a scene where Constantine is inundated by the creatures of hell, and desperately tries to reach the matchbox and get those beetles to screeching.

Again, we know. How is this criticism in any way? But yes, I do love all the weaponry and the humourous way some of the items are introduced. It's called "entertainment". "Beeman" was a character made-up just for the movie so make of it what you will.

Rachel Weisz plays Angela Dodson, an L.A. police detective whose twin sister, Isabel, has apparently committed suicide. Isabel reported seeing demons, so Angela consults Constantine, who nods wisely and wonders if Isabel jumped, or was metaphysically pushed. Later in the film, to show Angela that she also has the gift of seeing the world behind the world, Constantine holds her underwater in a bathtub until she passes out and sees the torments of hell. No bright white corridors and old friends and Yanni for her. You wonder what kind of an L.A. cop would allow herself to be experimentally drowned in a bathtub by a guy who lives over a bowling alley.

More storytelling and blah, blah, blah. Strangely enough, the kind of L.A. cop who allows herself to be "experimentally drowned in a bathtub" is one who is beside herself with grief/guilt over her sister's death and will try anything to find out why it happened. Did you miss that part, Roger? Nobody else did.

It's also worth noting that Rachel Weisz is awesome in the role. She's English but manages to pull off a perfectly legitimate American accent which is incredibly difficult. She's quite pretty too.

Together, they prowl the nighttime streets. At one point, Constantine needs to consult Midnite (Djimon Hounsou), a former witch doctor who runs a private nightclub where half-angels and half-demons can get half-loaded and talk shop. There is a doorman. To gain admittance, you have to read his mind and tell him what's on the other side of the card he's holding up. "Two frogs on a bench," Constantine says. Could have been a lucky guess.

Nope, it couldn't have been a lucky guess as Shia LeBoeuf's character, Chas Kramer, finds out when he attempts to bluff his way in. You have to know the answer, that's the point. It's a bar full of angels, demons, and psychics with supernatural abilities. What password method would be more appropriate? A secret handshake perhaps for those who have hands not paws?

What would have worked here is some condemnation of how weak Shia LeBoeuf's character is for most of the movie until he gets chance to cast off the comedic aspects and shine for a moment later. That would have been too much like reviewing though, wouldn't it?

There is a priest in the film, the alcoholic Father Hennessy (Pruitt Taylor Vince), whose name, I guess, is product placement. Strange that there is a priest, since that opens the door to Catholicism and therefore to the news that Constantine is not doomed unless he wages a lifelong war against demons, but need merely go to confession; three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys, and he's outta there. Strange, that movies about Satan always require Catholics. You never see your Presbyterians or Episcopalians hurling down demons.

I think you'll find that Father Hennessy is a conflation of three characters from the "Hellblazer" comicbooks, and the one whose name he uses actually eats himself to death originally. Product placement? Hardly. A little word play on his alcoholism? Of course.

Talk about missing the point of the story completely! Constantine can't earn his way into Heaven by fighting demons or repentance. Confession may be good for the soul but Constantine's is already doomed. He's a suicide destined for Hell when he dies. Ever get the feeling that someone didn't watch the movie or remember what he wrote a couple of paragraphs ago?

Of course, most movies about Satan require Catholics. It's the "one true church" and all that jazz. If it wasn't for Catholicism (and the aforementioned Emperor Constantine), Christianity wouldn't have such a recognisable form. Post-reformation times, there are around 500 different Christian denominations, but none of them have the iconography (and idolatory) of Catholism. If you want a Christian minister in a movie, you need to have him in black and wearing a dog collar. It's the first thing people think of. Also, on the contrary, you do see Presbyterians and Episcopalians hurling down demons just not in the movies. Seeing people quietly praying instead of screaming Latin words doesn't have the same entertainment value. Baptists have been shown to be just as effective in "The Last Exorcism", but I'll give you that one because it was only recently.

The forces of hell manifest themselves in many ways. One victim is eaten by flies. A young girl is possessed by a devil, and Constantine shouts, "I need a mirror! Now! At least three feet high!" He can capture the demon in the mirror and throw it out the window, see, although you wonder why supernatural beings would have such low-tech security holes.

Why not give away an entire scene and spoil it for everyone? To answer the question with another, why would supernatural beings not have high-tech security either? They are narcissistic, vain and evil, that's why. They think they are invincible. Pride, however, comes before a fall. It's a proverb, look it up. It's an important plot point.

Reeves has a deliberately morose energy level in the movie, as befits one who has seen hell, walks among half-demons, and is dying. He keeps on smoking. Eventually he confronts Satan (Peter Stormare), who wears a white suit. (Satan to tailor: "I want a suit just like God's.") Oh, and the plot also involves the Spear of Destiny, which is the spear that killed Christ, and which has been missing since World War II, which seems to open a window to the possibility of Nazi villains, but no.

Finally, something approaching a real critical comment!!! Yes, Keanu Reeves does have a "deliberately morose energy level in the movie". It's called acting, that's what he does and what has made him an A-list celebrity. His character is morose for a reason. So would you be if you knew you were going to Hell to be torn apart over and over again for all eternity. He's also a rude asshole with a cold demeanour but a kind heart. Constantine is a multi-layered character hidden under a two-dimensional one which Keanu Reeves excels at bringing to life. That's what should have been said.

So what if Constantine keeps on smoking? It's even mentioned by his doctor. As if closing the stable door after the horse has bolted will make any difference once you have inoperable lung cancer! If you are addicted to smoking, it isn't that easy to stop even though you know it's killing you.

All Roger Ebert got from Peter Stomare's outstanding performance as Satan was that he wore a white suit. Jesus wept! This is what famous movie critics get paid for? I might as well say, "Roger Ebert has grey hair. Now send me $20,000 for stating the obvious!" Why no mention of Gavin Rossdale's equally sinister performance as Balthazar? Wasn't there some snarky comment Roger could make about the dapper way he was dressed?

Yes, the plot involves the Spear of Destiny. It also appears in a lot of other movies which don't contain Nazi villains. Google is your friend for that one. If you want more of the same, read Trevor Ravenscoft's "The Spear of Destiny: The Occult Power Behind the Spear which pierced the side of Christ" or even James Herbert's "The Spear". Those will sort you right out.

Roger Ebert, you are an overpaid idiot! "Constantine" is a great movie with a cult following which you will never have. Your time is over, dinosaur. Go watch penguins dressed up as football players and leave the movies to people who aren't too burnt out to enjoy them.

The Possession (2012)

"A young girl buys an antique box at a yard sale, unaware that inside the collectible lives a malicious ancient spirit. The girl's father teams with his ex-wife to find a way to end the curse upon their child."

Even though I watched this a few days ago, I thought I'd better wait for the whole week since its release to pass just to give you all chance to see it before I mercilessly ruin it for everyone with spoilers.

The thing is, with a formulaic horror film like this which was put together with so much contempt for the audience, why should I even care if I give away all the details and help to deprive it of a few overpriced cinema ticket sales? Obviously, I don't.

So what was "The Possession" really about? Was it simply the fictional story of a dybbuk who looked like Gollum from "The Lord of the Rings" or was any of it based on the true story of a possessed item bought from a yard sale? I have absolutely no idea, but I do know that this was yet more lazy filmmaking which created a product designed to appeal to stupid teenagers with more money than sense.

There were two huge warning signs for this movie which I chose to ignore. The first of these was that it was yet another Sam Raimi produced "Ghost House" picture. Has there even been one film carrying that label which was half-way decent? I think not. The second was that it had a PG-13 rating. Although it's completely possible to re-rate an older scary movie as a PG-13 and retain its scariness, modern filmmakers are physically incapable of creating anything which we could call "horror" when restricting themselves to the whims of the MPAA. What the hell is the point of a PG-13 horror movie anyway? What do you expect to see in it apart from a CGI monster? Or do you just want to be jolted awake by an obnoxiously loud jump scare which drowns out all the texters and chatters in the cinema?

When I saw that the director was none other than Ole Bornedal, who had a minor success with the original Swedish version of "Nightwatch" (1994) but less so with the 1997 remake starring Ewan McGregor, I was still prepared to give "The Possession" a chance. Even though Ole Bornedal's "Nightwatch" wasn't a patch on Timur Bekmambetov's fantasy movie of the same name (which has created a lot of irritation for me when I've been trying to buy memorabilia from eBay over the years), I let that pass. I shouldn't have forgotten about the other kiddie-friendly movie which he made for "Ghost House Pictures" called "The Substitute" (2007), but anyone who has the courage to put the gorgeous Lene Nystrøm from Aqua in a horror film, such as he did with "Deliver Us from Evil" (2009) still deserves some respect even if that thriller wasn't very good either.

Of course, the other big draw for me was the chance to see Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who I only know as the "Comedian" from "Watchmen" (2009), in something that had the potential to stretch his acting muscles a bit more. I had no idea he was also from that lame horror TV show for girls, "Supernatural", or that would have been the deciding factor in favour of not watching "The Possession" at all. Alas, it wasn't the only mistake I made this week, as you know.

I've chosen the picture above as typical of everything that was wrong with "The Possession". It had children in it, stupid CGI effects, adults who were looking the other way most of the time and who couldn't see the obvious until it was right in front of them, and, basically, it was totally ridiculous.

Although it started off well with all sorts of domestic situation problems which promised to be interesting later plus some quite likeable characters, everything took a turn for the worse when the father, who was named after Clint Eastwood's monkey, decided that the most fun thing he could take his daughters to was a yard sale. What did they buy there which little girls would love to have? An iPhone? A rare Barbie? Justin Bieber CDs? No. Instead, the littlest of the little girls decided that she wanted a crappy old wooden box with Hebrew inscriptions all over it. This was based on a true story, right? Oh, yes, I can see how all this really happened. Not.

It's not that I haven't heard of possessed items being bought from yard sales or thrift stores before. I once heard a story on "Talk Radio" (back when it was good and wasn't "Talk Sport") about someone who bought a haunted chest of drawers which made everyone feel suicidally depressed. I've even seen cursed lamps, dollhouses and mirrors bought from yard sales at Amityville, but, of course, the latter were all in crappy horror movies too.

One thing I'd never heard of before "The Unborn" (2009) was a "dybbuk" (or "dibbuk") which, apparently, thanks to "The Possession", I now know can be banished into a box just like an evil genie into its bottle (provided, of course, that you know its name which is hidden behind a mirror in the aforementioned box). A dybbuk is therefore a djinn without any of the three wishes fun and games. Thanks for that, Sam Raimi.

I also now know that if you want to get rid of a dybbuk, traditional Jews won't help you but their rebellious popstar offspring will. I must admit that I thought Matisyahu as Tzadok was pretty great in his role, and I just loved his impersonation of a drinking bird toy from the '70s when he was exorcising the dybbuk.

Let's face it, this film was utter trash. It stole all of its ideas from older exorcism movies including the big one, "The Exorcist", with everyone trusting in the psychology crap followed by an MRI and all that other nonsense instead of just believing in the supernatural like any normal person would. When Clyde, who, to his credit, was the first to believe, offered himself to the dybbuk in place of his daughter, I could see William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty spinning in their graves, and neither of them is even dead yet.

And what about that hospital? Would you ever want to be in a hospital where someone could make that much noise, scream their lungs out and smash the place apart without anyone coming to see what was going on? I know it was an American hospital and medical care in the States is non-existent unless you pay $1,000,000 an hour for it, but this was just bullshit. Oh, I forgot for a second there that this was based on a true story.

Possibly the only part of "The Possession" which was true was the ending. Yes, you probably will die if you are talking on your cellphone instead of concentrating on driving, and I'm sure I could find some statistics to prove that it has happened to thousands of people already if I could be bothered. Whatever, just don't do it.

So what do you think my rating will be for "The Possession"? It's not even out on DVD yet so I can't physically throw it into "The Dungeon". But, since this is the internet and I can cast this dybbuk-filled mess into any virtual box I like, that's precisely where it's going. True story.

Alucarda (1977)

"A young girl's arrival at a convent after the death of her parents marks the beginning of a series of events that unleash an evil presence on the girl and her mysterious new friend, an enigmatic figure known as Alucarda. Demonic possession, Satan worship, and vampirism follows."

Due to a recent debate on the "Better Geek Than Never" podcast about naked exorcism scenes which nobody seemed to know about, I thought I'd better do a very quick review and recommendation of "Alucarda" for you.

Unless you are the kind of person who loves Jean Rollin, Jess Franco, and most of the "nunsploitation" movies released by Redemption on VHS back in the '90s, you probably haven't heard of "Alucarda" or its director Juan López Moctezuma before. I can't say that all of his movies are worth acquiring if you are just an average horror fan, but "Alucarda" certainly provides a nice upgrade if you were brought up with Hammer.

Juan López Moctezuma's first movie, "The Mansion of Madness" (1973), is on the Mill Creek Entertainment "Chilling Classics" pack, and it's the one which most people have seen. Far fewer people have encountered his second movie, "Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary" (1975). It was a considerably better yet slightly too talky pulp horror movie which led to Moctezuma getting quite a reputation for having lots of blood, nudity, and attractive girls in his films. The badly paced plots of all three of his '70s horror movies were, arguably, more of an afterthought than anything else, but "Alucarda" was the last of these as well as being the peak of Moctezuma's career.

Susana Kamini and Tina Romero (above) are, obviously, the best reasons for watching "Alucarda" unless you just want to see priests and nuns flagellating each other. It's not really worth spending a great deal of time talking about the merits of the rest of the cast, since although they all did a great job, most of us have ever heard of any of them anyway.

Undoubtedly, the most famous actor in this, Claudio Brook, who is highly entertaining in a dual role as Dr. Oszek and the "Hunchbacked Gypsy", will only be known to you as the preacher in "The Devil's Rain" (1975), which is another underrated gem which I have yet to write a review of.

As you can work out from the very poor anagram in the title, "Alucarda" is mostly a vampire movie based very loosely on "Carmilla" by Sheridan Le Fanu. As such, it follows much the same pattern as Hammer's earlier "Karnstein" movies, but it has a possession angle to it which may have been inspired by "The Devils" (1971). Despite some oustanding camerawork and a couple of really nice effects for the time, "Alucarda" doesn't have much originality. It even blatantly borrows from "Carrie" (1976) for one of its later scenes.

Personally, I've always thought that Susana Kamini as Justine was not only better looking but a much better actress than Tina Romero who played Alucarda. Your opinion may differ as, in fairness, neither of them seemed to have all that much acting ability, even though it was more than enough for what the story required them to do.

Exorcismus (2010)

(AKA The Possession of Emma Evans)



"A family allows their young daughter's exorcism to be recorded secretly."

Everybody calls this a Spanish horror movie due to the nationality of the director, writer and production company but as far as most viewers will be concerned, it's British. Ninety percent of the actors are British and the dialogue is in English so it's not exactly a typical Spanish film at all. It even has Doug "Pinhead" Bradley in it for all of five minutes.

Far more important than any of that though is that "Exorcismus" isn't very good. I've never been the biggest fan of "[REC]" (or its sequel and remake) but anyone expecting this to have some quality to it simply because it's by the same producers will be even more disappointed.

The biggest problem is that "Exorcismus" is just another in a long line of generic exorcism movies with nothing that really makes it stand out apart from a minor twist near the end. It's not even really a twist as such either but you'll see what I mean if you are ever unlucky enough to make it that far through the film to care.

It's not even worth getting into any of the technical details about the film as the acting is sort of nondescript, occasionally wooden, and just there. Nobody stands out, none of the characters are very engaging, and it's all just quite bland and flat. If you think of a really bad British horror TV show such as something that Channel Four might show really late at night when they hope that nobody is watching, this is about the same quality. Actually, it's a little bit worse because it takes itself completely seriously.

The camerawork is dreadful. It's a mixture of constantly moving handheld and POV shots but this isn't a "found footage" film that would even benefit from those techniques. I advise having a couple of doses of whatever you usually take for a headache handy if you do decide to watch this as you are bound to get one.

It's also very bright and clean looking to the point of being ridiculously so. A lot more gloominess might have given "Exorcismus" some atmosphere as it doesn't have any.

There are no scares or suspense but there are some unintentionally funny moments due to the ineptness of it all. At one point the possessed girl seems to be channelling Dawn French's parody of Regan from "The Exorcist".

Of course, this is going straight into "The Dungeon". It's derivative, predictable and clichéd. Even worse, it's also really rather boring with it.

The Rite (2011)

"An American seminary student travels to Italy to take an exorcism course."

I've just finished watching "The Rite" and I'm still buzzing from what I now consider to be the second greatest exorcist movie of all time. Bearing in mind that "Constantine" is number one and "The Exorcist" itself is number three on my list, and you'll get an idea of just how "The Rite" fits into my probably warped appreciation of this subgenre.

Apart from "The Exorcist" which I saw at the tender age of nineteen, years after "Repossessed" tried to ruin any shock value it could hold for me, I've never been a big fan of these Catholic church dramas. The story is always the same, there's always lots of doubting and then God wins.

When "Constantine" came out, things changed. John Constantine knew that demons, angels and God existed so the whole exorcism thing moved into new territory with loads of action and less of all that talky nonsense, frightened looks and self-sacrifice. Unfortunately, "Constantine" was pretty much hated by everybody and everything regressed again.

So with great trepidation, I watched "The Rite" thinking that it was going to be the same clichéd old schtick as a couple of dozen weak, often PG-13 rated, exorcism films all of which I detest especially "The Exorcist III" and the prequels. There aren't even enough swear words in the English language to describe how much I hate "The Exorcism of Emily Rose".

I got a very pleasant surprise with "The Rite" though. For a start it had Anthony Hopkins in it not some Tom Wilkinson guy doing a poor impersonation of his Americanized accent. It also had a younger, fresher version of Damien Karras played by Colin O'Donoghue as well as that Brazillian chick from "Predators" and a cameo from Rutger Hauer. Good times!

What really set "The Rite" apart from the slew of crappy exorcist clones already in existence was the powerfulness of everything. This was dark, eerie stuff and I'm surprised that it kept within the the PG-13 rating. There was all that twisting, convulsing, possessed stuff as usual too but it opted to go for agony rather than vulgarity. I kind of like that in a horror movie not that I'm opposed to as much vulgarity as a filmmaker can sling my way either. This was just classy and Anthony Hopkins screaming "BAAAAAL!" had more effect than a million Regan wannabes enticing their priests with "Lick me, lick me!"

Aw, but I'm giving away the plot and you know how I hate doing that even for a January theatrical movie that took all of two months to come out on DVD. "The Rite" is full of clichés of course, the characters are all pretty two-dimensional, and it's derivative of every other exorcist movie out there but it's still a great film with awesome camerawork, effects and ANTHONY HOPKINS!

Yes, Anthony Hopkins makes this film into something which could have been so generic by giving a performance right up there with his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter. In fact, I'd say that his Father Lucas Trevant is better than Hannibal Lecter which is no mean feat considering that Anthony Hopkins is in his seventies now.

Was there any realism to how the exorcisms were performed and was it really inspired by true events? Probably not but who cares? It's a horror movie and a thoroughly entertaining one.

I absolutely recommend "The Rite" to anybody and everybody who appreciates a good creepy atmosphere, scary demonic possessions and a city full of cats. Ok, so you don't really have to be into Rome's abundant cat population to like this film, that's just something I picked up on, but if you've ever wanted to see a worthy sequel to "The Exorcist" without stupid scenes of people walking on the ceiling or spewing pea soup all over the place then "The Rite" is for you.