Film review – 13 Exorcismos (13 Exorcisms)

13 Exorcismos (13 Exorcisms)

This opens with captions about the specific processes of securing and performing an exorcism in Spain and a claim that – as usual – this film is based on authentic cases … though a caption in the end credits fudges this a bit by admitting the actual story is made up, if the symptoms (almost all familiar from The Exorcist and many others) aren’t.  Nearly fifty years on from The Exorcist, and we’ve been over this ground so many times that it takes a lot to make an impression with an exorcism movie – and this well-acted, unsettling-at-times picture doesn’t quite get out of its familiar rut.  Yet again, there’s a clash between faith and reason as teenager Laura (Maria Romanillos) is caught between her strictly religious, stern mother (Ruth Diaz) and a more appealing school psychiatrist (Silma Lopez) who have very different interpretations of what she’s going through after sneaking out on Halloween with schoolfriends and holding a séance in a house which once belonged to a local serial killer called ‘the Doctor’.

Mother believes God has been punishing her family – one child is disabled and another died in a car crash – and brings in a traditional priest, who promises that thirteen exorcisms will rid the girl of the devil (any more would be a disaster).  The shrink suspects Laura’s pals put drugs in her drink and that the rite is only doing her more harm.  The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Requiem, based on the same case, took diametrically opposed lines on the facts which would accord with the takes of mother and social worker here – the American film suggests the girl was actually possessed while the German film suggests she had mental issues and her death was at least partially the fault of the Catholic church.  Ever since The Exorcist, it’s been an issue that in real life even most devout folk would believe the rational explanation over the supernatural one but for the purposes of a movie fiction audiences want at least the option to determine the Devil was behind it all.

13 Exorcisms has a lot in common with Emily Rose/Requiem – and Romanillos is put through very disturbing contortions and the like as the possession manifests and the demon within her reacts to attempts to get rid of it.  Padre Olmedo (Jose Sacristan), the exorcist, blesses the water in her dripfeed – and as the holy water hits her bloodstream, her limbs twist and kink like a pretzel.  The aesthetic is more realistic than the Dick Smith make-up of The Exorcist, but the multi-authored screenplay – five people – suggests the room never got its theology straight … deep down, the conservative vision of The Exorcist, that monkeying with ouija boards leads to spiritual doom, maintains its hold over the sub-genre, and a lot of untidy plotting about that serial killer (who apparently claimed to be possessed) and exactly what went on at the Halloween party only serves to interrupt the parade of rites (thirteen of them, marked by numbered candles) without settling on any answers.  Director Jacobo Martinez, a former cinematographer, whips up an impressive picture and it has quite a lot of distressing material tactfully handled.

But God and the Devil and the filmmakers still seem to take a delight in punishing the undeserving in a way that’s a tough sell these days – and maybe we shouldn’t be so cavalier about valorising priests who torture children for their own good while depicting anyone who intervenes in the process as a naïve idiot.