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Catholicism

Posted on September 29, 2024

Borderlands of Final Prayer

Guest Post

By Steve A. Wiggins

The 2013 folk horror found-footage movie Final Prayer (Elliot Goldner, 2013, released stateside as Borderlands) underscores the conflict of religions that fuels much of the genre. Even so, some of the choices on the Christian side of the formula are a bit unusual.  

The Catholic Church, often in cases of canonization (or saint-making) investigates claims of miracles. Sometimes it investigates miracle claims on their own.  That’s the premise here.  Although set in England, Final Prayer is about a Catholic Church. The investigator Deacon (Gordon Kennedy) arrives to find his new colleague Gray Parker (Robin Hill), having already installed cameras in the cottage where they’re staying.  Gray insists that they wear head-cameras throughout. It shortly becomes clear that a third investigator, Fr. Mark Amidon (Aidan McArdle) is also expected.  Deacon is a religious brother—he’s basically a monk, but not associated with a monastery. Gray is a layman, only nominally Catholic, who took the job as a techie because it paid well. And when he arrives, it becomes clear that Mark, the priest, is in charge.

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Posted on August 25, 2023

Exorcising The Pope’s Exorcist

Guest Post

The Pope’s Exorcist (Julius Avery, 2023) was released in April to much fanfare and has just recently landed on Netflix.  While it performed well enough at the box office, it failed to wow the critics.  It certainly didn’t rise to the level of The Exorcist (1973).  In fact, the many possession/exorcism movies that have appeared since William Friedkin’s masterpiece have generally fallen short.  One of the reasons seems to be the failure to really understand the religion portrayed.  Let’s use The Pope’s Exorcist as a test case.

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black and white line drawing of a faceless priest
Posted on October 4, 2021

Midnight Mass Takes us to the Church of Dread

Guest Post

I have done my best to write a spoiler-free piece about Midnight Mass. Light spoilers are unavoidable, but I promise I have preserved the most major of twists and turns.

Horror centered on faith and religion has percolated through the genre since its earliest days, stories sprouting from the festering fears of demons, witches, and the Devil in all his incarnations. It is a sub-genre rife for use, and one that gashes nerves, especially for the more devout audience members. I would not consider myself a religious person, but I grew up hearing about my father’s time in a Catholic seminary, a path he opted out of just before the priesthood. I like to joke that I ended up with all the guilt and none of the fun stuff like faith. As I discovered my love of horror, we talked about The Exorcist, a movie he deemed the most terrifying thing he had ever seen because of its Catholic roots. When I finally watched the film it was unsettling, although not as disturbing to me as it was to him. What did stick with me was Father Karras’s grappling with life, death, and trauma. I invoke that film, and that character because Mike Flanagan’s new limited series Midnight Mass is about as Catholic as horror can come, and through his writing and directing, Flanagan filters the hopes of horrors of humanity through the faith and traumas of Crockett Island’s small and isolated community. Read more

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