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Movie Monday: The Rite


rite.JPGThe faith-inflected frightfest The Rite scared up $15 million to claim No. 1 at the box office this weekend. It proved Anthony Hopkins, at the age of 73, can still be a pretty scary guy.

In a way, from Plugged In’s perspective, The Rite wasn’t nearly as frightening as second place No Strings Attached—the sexually amped romcom which dropped a spot in its second week and pocketed about $13.7 million. Nor was it as disturbing as Jason Statham’s hyper-violent The Mechanic, which (according to Monday’s estimates) earned $11.5 million and finished the weekend in a virtual dead heat with The Green Hornet.

No, The Rite, as freaky and sometimes icky as it was, at least offered movie-goers a cogent look at faith—or, rather, the conflux of doubt and faith in the midst of a few old-school exorcisms. As reviewer Adam Holz wrote:

Western Christians don't spend very much time thinking about in our spiritually sterile, logically ordered, iPod-enhanced world. And that makes [The Rite] a poignant reminder that we are indeed in a spiritual battle, a battle that rages all around us … even if the vast majority of us, thankfully, will never experience it quite like the people in this story do.

Though the film’s been savaged by secular reviewers, Adam was pretty impressed with how thoughtful this film laid out demonic possession. Even the film’s tagline—”You can  only defeat it when you believe”—offers a nod to the importance of faith, and from what I gather, the filmmakers went out of their way to make the thing as realistic as possible to the real-life experiences of Catholic exorcists. Some parts of the story were loosely based on the life of Father Gary Thomas, who serves as an official exorcist for San Jose, Calif. Thomas served as a consultant for the film and has since been making the rounds with various news outlets. One interview, which ran in the Catholic outlet zenit.org, was pretty interesting, in that he voices some concerns about how Hollywood typically treats this subject:

I think in many cases Hollywood is basing everything on sensationalism, which I'm hoping this movie is not about. Exorcism, rather, is a ritual set of prayers that command the demon to cease its attempt to inflict harm, suffering, pain and total possession of a human being, and to depart. There are some dramatic manifestations that I've encountered, but often times what Hollywood tries to do is exacerbate the dramatic and add to it in the name of entertainment, when quite honestly this is not a topic to entertain people with.

I’ve not seen The Rite yet, but part of me would kind of like to. At home. When I can turn all the lights on.