This low-budget, minor-key and – frankly – dreary horror feature offers yet another dramatisation of the 1928 exorcism of a young woman (played here by Abigail Cowen), known by her alias Anna Ecklund and her real name Emma Schmidt. The real-life ritual, which transpired at a nunnery in Iowa, was overseen by elderly German Capuchin priest Father Theophilus Riesinger (Al Pacino) and local cleric Father Joseph Steiger (Dan Stevens) and written up as a pamphlet (“Begone Satan!”) that went on to shape the public understanding of exorcisms.
All that historical detail is transfused into a weak tea of a script, credited to the film’s director David Midell and Enrico Natale. They have generated a work that is a little more interested in background and context instead of sweary pyrotechnics and supernatural fireworks often found in demonic-possession-themed features, the most notably The Exorcist from 1973. But we still get bits of levitation here and there, and moments when poor possessed Emma seems to free-solo the walls of the dank basement room she’s locked in. At other points, she inexplicably vomits what look like tobacco leaves and speaks in a variety of exotic tongues. The men of the cloth stoically soldier on while an assortment of nuns stand by looking petrified and aghast.
It’s perhaps unfair to ask that a film be an entirely different creature than the one the film-makers intended to produce. But in this case, it feels a bit disappointing that the cast and crew worked so hard on the historical roots and verisimilitude stuff, and then insisted on sticking with the idea that Emma was literally possessed, instead of exploring how she might have a mental illness, coupled with childhood trauma.
At least Pacino doesn’t seem to be taking any of it seriously as he phones in an uncharacteristically low-volume performance whose most distinguishing feature is the Mitteleuropean accent that makes him sound as if he’s reprising his performance as Shylock from The Merchant of Venice. Stevens, for his part, just looks as if he’s waiting for all this to be over (not unlike the character he plays) so he can go back to working on the sort of kooky, craft-stretching roles he’s been having so much fun with lately, such as his mad scientist in Cuckoo or his German-speaking android in I’m Your Man. Even so, his presence somewhat improves this schlock.
• The Ritual is in UK and Irish cinemas from 30 May
