The Devil and Father Amorth (2017)
** (out of 4)
For better or worse, THE EXORCIST will always be the film people think of whenever William Friedkin is discussed. I personally don't think it's his best film but there's no question that it was a ground-breaking motion picture that was the director's most successful at the box office. It's interesting to see that towards the end of his career he would revisit the subject of exorcisms but this time it's the true story of Father Amorth who let Friedkin film his ninth exorcism on a woman.
THE DEVIL AND FATHER AMORTH got released to mostly negative reviews with many calling into question the ethics of Friedkin because of a twist that happens towards the end of the picture. I'll get to that more in a minute but there's no doubt that this here is a rather questionable movie for the director to tackle and especially when you consider it's just 69-minutes, which makes it feel more like a Blu-ray extra instead of an actual feature. In fact, Friedkin hasn't taken too kindly to the negative press this film has gotten and has really lashed out at critics.
Well, I'm sorry to say it but I have to agree with the negativity surrounding this picture. The first ten or so minutes basically has Friedkin talking about THE EXORCIST including revisiting the locations where it was filmed. He talks about the case that the movie was based on and then we get some archival footage of William Peter Blatty discussing the original case and the film. Umm... okay. I'm really not sure why we needed this stuff unless it was some sort of attempt to bring more attention to this movie. Perhaps the running time wasn't long enough so this was added?
Whatever the case is, none of this early footage is of much interest but then we jump to the exorcism that is being performed. We hear from the woman's family as well as Father Amorth who talks about exorcisms and various ones that he has performed. Once we get to the exorcism the main thing that's going to jump out is the voice coming from the woman. Some have question whether it's a sound effect or not but I really don't know. Are these scenes scary? Not at all.
What follows is Friedkin talking to a various of doctors and showing them the footage. There's a debate on whether it is some sort of brain issue yet we never really get any test results from the woman herself. The back and forth debate on the religious issue to the medical one is rather interesting but then we get back to the controversial ending. I'm not going to spoil it for people but I must admit that I found it to be incredibly stupid and I didn't buy it at all. It's like one of those monster hunter television shows where nothing ever happens until the moment a camera isn't set up.
THE DEVIL AND FATHER AMORTH is a film that I was really looking forward to but it's a real shame that it turned out the way it did.
