Well, here’s a little curio that I stumbled upon. While skimming through YouTube for new film releases to review, I came across the trailer for this film, which included the scene of a demonic Jesus jumpscaring a priest. I am nothing if not easily intrigued, so I decided to check it out. I went in expecting something campy and, considering the over-saturation of the sub-genre, been-there-done-that, and that is definitely what I got… along with an especially foul taste in my mouth.
Let’s start with that initial image first, that of the possessed son of God as one of the resident spooks. He basically appears in the same fashion as demons in the Conjuring Universe, and is himself tied to the mental state of Peter (Will Beinbrink), a priest repenting for a past sin. To an extent, I get the point of the imagery here, highlighting something pure evil in the body of someone good, echoed by phrases like “God and the Devil cannot exist in the same body” (which, speaking as a Taoist, isn’t an idea I recognise, but whatever). However, the actual effect it creates is that of a cheesy spoof movie, or a YouTube gag trailer.
That parodic impression isn’t helped by how the film opens, which is one of the more blatant Exorcism rip-offs I’ve seen in recent years, right down to a shot that is basically just the poster for the bloody thing. From there, it makes the same mistake a lot of exorcism movies make in missing the point of why Regan’s “your mother sucks cocks in Hell!” scenes were so disturbing, ramping up the hypersexuality of the possessed woman in question as if that alone is scary. Complete with squishy sound effects, because this film has as close a relationship with subtlety as I do with the Vatican. When it gets to the point of the priest making out with the woman, not only am I just straight-up watching a scene from Scary Movie 2, it’s like a hasty rewrite of a porno spoof, and that level of sensationalism carries through in a lot of the more demonic moments.
Between these two modes, both of which are closer to piss-takes of the genre than anything genuine, it plants itself firmly in the realms of ‘not good’. But at least its kitschy atmosphere could make for something ironically enjoyable. I mean, a filmmaker earnestly trying to make a proper exorcism film, and coming out with this, is already quite hilarious just to contemplate, so surely, the film proper works on the same wavelength, right?
Well, no.
For a time, it may be trashy but in a fun way, but the more it exposits about the actual plot, the more that feeling turns into just pure disgust at the shit being presented. And it all has to do with that past sin I mentioned earlier, as it involves Peter being possessed by the demon he was trying to drive out of Magali (Irรกn Castillo)… and then raping her. Now, that on its own isn’t immediately the problem; hell, the way the scene is presented, it reminded me of a rather infamous moment from Alan Moore’s Providence, and it brought a similar sense of horror at what it means to lose control of one’s body to evil forces.
However, there’s a quite glaring problem with how that is presented here. Now, I could get into how this very scenario (sexual abuse under the guise of an exorcism) is way too goddamn common in the real world, as are allegations of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church at large, and how the pissweak defence of ‘the Devil made me do it’ plays into the total revocation of personal responsibility that I absolutely despise seeing. But if I was to go down that route, I’d be here all day getting into the frictions between fiction and reality when it comes to how exorcisms are portrayed (and, in the process, ravaging the Conjuring films in particular along those lines), and that’s not even where my problem with this is. Although, don’t get me wrong, it sure doesn’t fucking help matters.
No, my issue is with how the sexual abuse itself is framed and understood within the film’s own logic. The scene itself (while mercifully off-screen for the more graphic parts) presents the abuse as something that the priest was tempted by to begin with, but that the demon in question merely pushed him further towards. The interactions between Peter and Magali years after the fact just make it worse, as he still treats her with a highly uncomfortable level of disregard considering what happened.
Where it really ticks me off is that, not only is Magali’s trauma pretty much brushed over (because this is rape as plot point, not as something to actually be examined and thought about for more than a second), but even Peter’s is woefully mishandled as well. His bodily autonomy was also taken away, and used to abuse someone else to boot, and yet the whole time, it’s treated more as an affront to God than an afront to another human being or even himself. Put simply, the two examples come together to expose the film and its creators as treating rape simply as ‘a thing that happens to women’, as if Peter himself wasn’t violated as well. Not saying that to downplay what Magali is put through, but more to highlight that this film’s truly fucked perspective on such a delicate topic shows in more than one fashion.
So… yeah. I went in expecting to laugh myself silly at spider-walking demonic Jesus, and instead found myself struggling to get through something this fundamentally broken. When it isn’t flouting its own woeful insensitivity, it’s stuck between two very different production aesthetics that are typically designed to amuse rather than frighten. And as a result, in-between the cracks when the film isn’t being disgusting or seemingly trying to mock itself before the audience can, there’s no room for any actual genre scares. There’s a couple decent ideas buried in here, like how a good chunk of the film is set in a maximum security prison full of possessed inmates, but they can’t escape from under the massive weight of bewildering and frequently aggravating creative decisions that occupy the rest of the production. It’s too shite to be enjoyed honestly, and it’s too poisonous to enjoy ironically; the worst kind of bad movie.
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