Mikael Hafstrom
Il Rito

The Devil Returns to the Scene, and with him the exorcists intent on sanctifying young creatures with altered voices. 

"The Rite" is the latest endeavor by the Swede Mikael Håfström, one of the consecrated talents of blockbuster horror ("1408"), and it's loosely based on the book "The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist" by Matt Baglio.

Michael Kovak (Colin O'Donoghue, practically a newcomer) is the son of a mortician and has been in contact with corpses since he was born, since he saw his father prepare his dead mother for burial; he decides to become a seminarian even though he doesn't harbor a real faith in God and religion, which leads him to apply for withdrawal just before completing his studies. Due to this skepticism, he is sent to the Vatican to attend a course on exorcism techniques and during his Roman experience, he is put in contact with Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins), an exorcist with rather peculiar and not very orthodox methods, sometimes involving deceptions and superstitions.

Hiding behind his armor of doubt and disbelief, Michael Kovak suggests several times to Father Lucas himself that psychiatry could save human lives where exorcism tries to drive out phantom demons, even in the face of demonstrations of possession on a young pregnant girl (Marta Gastini); however, he yields to a total conversion to faith when he finds himself having to exorcise his own master, now aware of the existence of an Evil so profound that it transcends any human science.

Highly debatable for its content and underlying morals, "The Rite" is nonetheless a decent horror dominated by a great dark atmosphere of permanent nightmare, the malevolent manifestations of the possessed bodies this time do not consist of green vomits or spider walks down stairs but are somewhat more restrained, the presence of the Evil one is slowly tasted until Hopkins' final applause-worthy solo, not at the level of Al Pacino's in "The Devil's Advocate" but nonetheless superb, perhaps the only real and indispensable reason to buy a ticket to the cinema.

The screenplay is not flawless and at times gives the impression of stressing the story, however, it is the setting in a cold and sunless Rome that is the film's strength, along with the desire to show the presence of Evil even in what are considered the holiest places on Earth. Not that it took Håfström to remind us, but one more never hurts.