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.
