Russell Crowe screams at demons in The Pope’s Exorcist trailer
Horror movies — they’re not just for October. This week, Sony dropped a spooky trailer for The Pope’s Exorcist, a Russell Crowe-led exorcism extravaganza hitting theaters later this spring.
The movie is adapted from the writings of Father Gabriele Amorth, an Italian Catholic priest and renowned exorcist who founded the International Association of Exorcists and claimed to perform tens of thousands of exorcisms over the course of his life. In The Pope’s Exorcist, Amorth (Russell Crowe) “investigates a young boy’s terrifying possession and ends up uncovering a centuries-old conspiracy the Vatican has desperately tried to keep hidden,” per Sony’s news release.
The Pope’s Exorcist also got a great poster, which is always nice.
The best part of the trailer is Russell Crowe’s delivery of the line “You have a problem with me, you talk to my boss… the pope.” An instant all-timer (who wouldn’t want to say this???), it’s aided by Crowe’s typical gruff demeanor. You don’t want to mess with this pope’s exorcist.
There are other reasons to think this movie could be a fun time: The Pope’s Exorcist comes from director Julius Avery, who made the above-average Nazi zombie movie Overlord(and also the less good Sylvester Stallone superhero vehicle Samaritan). Overlord is a gloriously good gory time that uses its genre elements to ground the audience in the story and then subvert their expectations, so it’s not a far leap to think the director of that could make a good exorcism movie. And if that’s not enough, Italian legend Franco Nero, best known as the star of Django, plays The Pope (and Ralph Ineson, from The Witch and The Green Knight, voices the demon).
The Pope’s Exorcist arrives to theaters on April 14.
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