I’m beginning to suspect that the Catholic Church has Hollywood producers under some sort of contractual obligation, the particulars stating that they must release one exorcist movie a year in which a doubtful priest reasserts his faith and confirms the existence of demons. Otherwise, I’m at a loss to explain why movies such as Mikael Håfström’s The Rite exist. Here is a film so ponderously pious, I half expected to find members of the Church positioned at the cinema door handing out leaflets. Or, ideally, a refund.

That being said, the Church isn’t doing their image any favours by permitting Hannibal Lecter to become a priest, but let’s be thankful they did, because Anthony Hopkins (The Wolfman) is the film’s only saving grace. As the unorthodox exorcist Father Lucas, Hopkins is having a heck of a lot more fun than those of us in the audience, using his venomous vernacular to scare the hell — quite literally — out of a heavily pregnant teenage girl.

Unfortunately, though, Hopkins doesn’t make an appearance until the half-hour mark given that he plays support to leading man Colin O’Donoghue, an Irishman with few previous credits. O’Donoghue dolefully embodies Michael, a young mortician with less charisma than the bodies lying on his autopsy table. Desperate to escape the family business and lead a zestier life, Michael – a part-time atheist – makes the logical decision to become a Catholic priest, effectively trading in his scalpel for scepticism. Yet despite his religious doubt, he is selected to attend exorcism classes at the Vatican where Father Xavier (Ciarán Hinds; The Eclipse) teaches him how to differentiate between demonic possessions and psychotic episodes. The key giveaway? Possessed people tend to have dark, sullied eyes and speak as though they’re dying from lung cancer. Joan Rivers, for example.

After enduring the long and laborious setup, the first fright comes in the form of a black cat that inexplicably leaps toward the camera, the kind of cheap jump scare that is hastily inserted during post-production when the filmmakers realise an episode of Two and a Half Men is more terrifying to watch. Hopkins’ long-awaited arrival does elevate the proceedings, but even he’s kept on a leash until the finale, where he lets Lecter loose and briefly frees the film from its overly staid tone.

Michael Petroni’s screenplay is supposedly “inspired by true events”, which I imagine is another way of saying he once saw William Friedkin’s The Exorcist and felt inspired to replicate it. Unlike last year’s surprisingly innovative The Last Exorcism, Håfström’s film makes no concerted effort to distinguish itself from Friedkin’s 1973 classic, a movie without peers but countless imitators. The Rite is easily among the worst of them, an exorcism movie in which all the scary bits have been exorcised.

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