The film that irritated the Catholic Church is coming: “Everything that is said about religion will generate a kind of inconvenience”

Appointed chief exorcist of the Vatican , Father Gabriele Amorth knows how to distinguish demonic possession from a psychologically tormented subject. This is how he explains it to a skeptical court that wants to relieve him of his duties. Not only does the pope protect him from criticism, he sends him to an abbey in Castile, Spain, to investigate the case of an American family tormented by an evil presence.

This is the central premise of The Pope’s Exorcist , the Julius Avery-directed film that hit theaters to appeal to horror movie fans and builds on the lore started in 1973’s The Exorcist. One of its hooks is that it draws on the writings of Amorth, who served from 1986 to 2016 as the main official responsible for the expulsion of demons by the Diocese of Rome.

The New Zealander Russell Crowe gives life to the cleric with solidity but with a touch of humor, the necessary dose so that at the wheel of a Vespa Faith No More plays in the background. His counterpart is Father Esquivel, the religious who is overwhelmed by the business in Spain. A character played by Costa Rican Daniel Zovatto (San José, 1991), an experienced actor in films such as It follows (2014) and don’t breathe (2016) and the HBO miniseries station eleven (2021).

“It takes a lot of energy to fall into paranoia. “, he said in a conversation with Worship . “Every movie has been different, but being in that energy takes a lot of time. After doing this every day for two months, I always end up sick. They throw you to the ground. The hardest thing is how hard it is physical.

Zovatto coped with the final days of filming The Pope’s Exorcist To take pills. “I was very, very sick. I was on antibiotics. I had no voice. So by the end of that movie, I’m not lying to you, it was pretty bad,” he says.

It’s hardly a revelation to say that Father Amorth and Father Esquivel are together for much of the footage in the film. As they attempt to solve the case of Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney), a traumatized boy who appears to be possessed by a demonic force, the priests strike up a master-apprentice relationship. A link that also involved filming work.

Part of his connection to Crowe was “seeing the way he prepared, the way he asked questions, knowing why he said this, why he didn’t say that”. The other was to listen to him tell something behind the scenes of his long and award-winning career. “I had a thousand and one stories for each of these films “, he details. “A scene could remind him of something and then he would tell me a story. All the time it was different things.

Released in theaters around the world in the middle of Easter, the feature has garnered reactions from the world it portrays. The International Association of Exorcists, the entity co-founded in 1994 by Gabriele Amorth, issued a long statement questioning its “unreliability on such a delicate and relevant issue”. Based on its trailer alone, the institution said it “misrepresents and falsifies what truly possessed people actually experience and experience during the exorcism.”

“It seems completely normal to me, I don’t think they would say anything else. They have their way of seeing things”, explains the interpreter, adding that the tape “is based on real articles written by Gabriele Amorth , (but) kind of has a bit of its whimsy and mystery and suspense. I think they didn’t like it.”

And he adds: “We are making a film about religion and I think that everything that is said about religion, because it will generate a kind of inconvenience Either there will be people who don’t like it or say it’s not a representation of what it should be. But everyone has their own opinion.”