The Last Exorcism (2010, our review here) obviously hasn’t been the last, and with The Exorcist (1973) still being one of the best horror movies ever, The Rite has a lot of spirits to take on that have possessed the movie landscape with more or less convincing stories. To me, a rather striking take on this subject was Francis Lawrence’s Constantine (2005) with Keanu Reeves as the cancer-ridden hellblazer. Others, like The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), were disappointingly mediocre, if not outright bad.

Like the Serpent, The Rite is based on a book and inspired by supposedly true events. Sceptical seminary student Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue) attends the exorcism school at the Vatican where he meets an unorthodox priest, Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins). Encountering demons during a number of exorcisms, Michael learns about the darker side of his faith and that the phenomenon of possession, of course, is not just a residue of the archaic ages but very contemporary and ubiquitous, even at the Vatican.

Matt Baglio’s book The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist has received mixed reviews however, if the film is true to the core message of the literary blueprint, it might just surprise even the disillusioned genre fans: