There is nothing wrong with The Exorcism of God that couldn’t be fixed by firing the entire cast and crew and replacing them with nutless monkeys. This is the funniest exorcism movie since Leslie Nielsen’s Repossessed, so it’s hard to believe that no one involved in it had the minimum brain cells required to see that they were making a comedy.
How in the fuck can we take seriously a horror movie where the butler from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air is “the greatest exorcist in the world”? Or where the hot little bitch from Spanish Nickelodeon’s Yo Soy Franky does her best, and by ‘best’ I mean ‘worst’, Linda Blair/Pazuzu impression (projectile puke included)? Or where the hero is haunted by visions of a “Jesus possessed by the devil” that looks like he came straight out of a Deicide album cover?
The pre-title sequence feels like an Exorcist porn parody minus the explicit sex but with the brain- damaged come-on lines intact. Father Peter Williams (Will Beinbrink) is trying to exorcise a sexy demon called Balban, currently possessing Mexican singer/actress Irán Castillo (the overall story is set in Mexico), but finds it, ahem, hard to concentrate, what with the demon determined to seduce him with some of the lamest single entendres you’ll ever hear.
Balban gets so worked up that he (she? it?) starts jerking off — or giving Irán a handjob, depending on the point of view —, and both demon and exorcism reach a climax at the same time. Balban then enters Peter, and together they enter Irán, if you know what I mean and I think you do. Eighteen years later we meet Esperanza, Peter and Iran’s daughter played by 29 year-old María Gabriela de Faría (bitch must have aged in demon years).
Esperanza is in jail because she ostensibly “killed a man. They found him bled to death, hanging from a tree, his head completely backwards.” Esperanza is showing “Symptoms of epilepsy, hysteria, schizophrenia” and “hasn’t eaten in over two weeks”, but the prison’s warden calls Peter because “She doesn’t need a doctor. She needs a priest.”
Peter has sworn off exorcisms, but decides to come out of retirement after he learns of his paternity during a reunion with Irán (in the course of which Peter is told that Esperanza “wants to be an astronaut. Or a film director.” Given the likelihood of those two scenarios, that she ended up possessed by the devil doesn’t seem so far-fetched anymore).
Peter, however, refuses to undertake the task without backup, and calls Father Michael Lewis (Joseph Marcell) — the Merrin to his Karras, as it were. Lewis is a proponent of what he calls “the auteur exorcism”; i.e., “Each priest performs the exorcism as he wants.” His advice to Peter is “not believing God is with you, but believing you are God.”
Lewis is also the proud inventor of some sort of holy water humidifier that “will make it float around the room, making it impossible for Balban to jump from one body to the next.” Nigga isn’t the world’s greatest exorcist for nothing.
Needless to say, Lewis is loonier than a motherfucker, and yet this character is the closest the movie comes to the parody it should have been — something along the lines of Agnes, a film that, without being over the top, quickly leaves no room for ambiguity as to what we’re actually supposed to be watching.
Anyway, to make a dumb story short, there’s the retarded third act, the titular Exorcism of God. Balban and some other of Esperanza’s fellow inmates, who apparently have all been possessed as well, capture and subdue Peter. “God is within me,” says Peter; “And that’s why I’m going to take him out of you,” replies Balban.
What follows is an elaborate anti-exorcism or some such bullshit. This has as much practical value as a real-life exorcism; if God were to exist as conceived by the fucking Church, he would be omnipotent and omnipresent — something a demon from hell should know better than anyone —, which raises the questions of how the fuck are you going to compel him to do anything, and whither the fuck are you going to cast him out.
Perhaps the filmmakers should have been somewhat less ambitious and made it The Exorcism of the Holy Spirit (which, according to theologian Rudolf Bultmann, can be “an independent agent, a personal power which like a demon can fall upon a man and take possession of him, enabling him or compelling him to perform manifestations of power”). Well, I guess there’s always the sequel.84Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgEWKtYscXU
