Ooga-Booga

The Devil made him do it. Or maybe his agent.

Films are often marketed by what "quadrant" they appeal to, the four quadrants being male, female, young and old. For instance, Sex & the City is a "single-quadrant" franchise, appealing almost entirely to women, whereas something like The Blind Side owes its box office success to being a four-quadrant film that ended up appealing to men and women, young and old. (Four-quadrant films are almost impossible to successfully conceive; they tend to be happy accidents that the Monday-morning quarterbacks pretend to have planned that way.) Avatar also transcended its genre origins (SciFi adventure) to become a four-quadrant film, whereas Tron Legacy (ha!) remained a two-quadrant (young males) and its box office died after its big opening weekend, killing this year's Christmas business with it.

Horror films are also single-quadrant films, appealing primarily to teens/young adults. However, these days the majority of horror films seem to be R-rated and gory (like the Saw franchise) or faux-Cinéma vérité (a la Paranormal Activity). An R-rated horror film is perceived to be more scary automatically in today's marketplace. I don't think it's impossible to make a scary PG-13 movie, but it requires real skill, all down the line. You need a tightly written tale, crisply edited, great spooky music and sound effects and a memorable baddie; instead audiences seem to get journeymen who are just picking their collective pocket for a quick buck with a cheap genre film.

The makers of The Rite, which opened last weekend, seem to have opted to try to buy themselves a second quadrant by paying for a big actor rather than punching up the story. Having sat through it, I can attest that the scariest thing about The Rite is what Anthony Hopkins will do for a dollar. (He's joined in the slumming by Ciaran Hinds, Toby Jones, and Rutger Hauer, all of whom are old enough to know better, but can be absolved by virtue of the fact that they cannot command the kind of salary Anthony Hopkins does.)

The second scariest thing about The Rite is how much business it managed to do ($14.8 million opening weekend), but that's largely reflective of the lack of new product in the marketplace. Exorcism stories seem to hold some appeal, no doubt kept afloat by the pea-soup ocean of still-scared-stiff memories generated by The Exorcist, which was released in 1973 and is number 9 on the all-time box office list (with prices adjusted for ticket-price inflation, which is the most meaningful way to gauge a film's true popularity). The Exorcist is still one of the scariest effing films I've ever seen, and I don't even believe a lick of its dogma.

The Rite, which opened last weekend, was directed by Mikael Håfström, whose resume includes 2007's 1408 (which I haven't seen, but I hear is of decent quality and has well-written underpinnings in the form of being based on a Stephen King short story) and a piece of dreck called Derailed, which I made the mistake of watching on cable (I'm a Clive Owen fan). The Rite is "suggested" (ruh-roh, as Scooby Doo would say)) by a book about the training of modern-day exorcists with same title by Matt Baglio, who alleges it is nonfiction; to say I am 'skeptical' of its veracity would be too slight an adjective.

Some never-heard-of-him actor named Colin O'Donoghue plays an American priest called Michael Kovak who attends a seminary (for the free education...ooh, snap!) instead of running the family mortuary with his bloated old dad (Hauer), but seems to be deficient in the faith department. His priest school mentor (Jones) sees potential in him, so Michael gets shipped off to the Vatican for some brainwashing -- er, further education -- and attends exorcism school (talk about a sucky major). Seems that Michael, the poor unbelieving sod, still thinks people who call the exorcist might actually be oh, I don't know, mentally ill, so his exorcism prof (Hinds) makes him go see wacky old exorcist Father Lucas Trevant (Hopkins), who has hordes of Roman cats overrunning his courtyard (arguably the only realism in the film).

There's this and that in the way of scary deep voices coming from 'possessed' teenaged girls (yawn. who hasn't heard those?) and Hopkins riffs shamelessly from his Hannibal Lecter litany of ooh-scary calm line deliveries (where's Count Floyd when you need him?). Naturally by the end of the film, Michael gives up on reality and joins Team Exorcism (I don't want anyone to think there's a happy ending).

Isn't Anthony Hopkins rich enough to pay for his own Roman Holiday without dragging us along on this nonsense? Last year he played daddy to The Wolfman and 2011 promises yet another embarrassment from Hopkins as he bellows his way through a scene as Thor's eye-patch wearing pops, Odin, in the upcoming Thor movie (rhymes with bore...and snore). What's next, a frigging Magic sequel?

Want to make a Catholic-themed movie that'll scare the crap out of people? Oh wait, someone already did. It's called Deliver Us From Evil, the 2006 documentary about Father Oliver O'Grady, who abused more than two dozen children (by his own admission) over a 30-year period, while the Church systematically shuffled him from parish to parish. He went to prison in 1993, served half his sentence, was paroled in 2000 and deported back to Ireland in 2001. The Irish authorities lost track of O"Grady in 2006 or so, and there were reports of him living in The Netherlands. Last month he resurfaced; he was arrested in Dublin, in possession of a laptop computer crawling with kiddie porn.

There's no exorcism for the real evil in the world, is there?

Father O'Grady