Sunday, June 26, 2016

The Vatican Tapes - A Forgettable Possession Horror Movie

It's been a while since I had a free Saturday night at home, and last night I browsed through the channels of cable TV in the hope of finding some nice movie which I can watch. When I bumped into the usual Saturday Night Premiere of a "new" movie with above title played on HBO, I immediately saw the brief synopsis and it raised my interest. So at 8 PM, I already sat in front of my TV to watch it.

Brief Story Line

Movie started with scene from Vatican, Rome where two priests, were watching a video of Angela (played by Olivia Taylor Dudley - Paranormal Activity: Ghost Dimension) who seemed to be possessed by evil spirit. Cardinal Bruun (played by Peter Andersson - Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit) decided to visit US to investigate the case. Vicar Imani the other priest (played by Djimon Hounsou - Blood Diamond etc) wanted to go but he was told to stay and continue the works of Cardinal Bruun and the other priests on the possession cases.

Movie then showed the scene 2 months before when Angela was going to celebrate her birthday with her boyfriend Pete (played by John Patrick Amedori) and her father Roger (played by Dougray Scott - Taken 3 etc). She accidentally cut her finger while cutting her birthday cake. Since the cut looked bad, they decided to go to the hospital to get it fixed and they met with Father Lozano (Michael Peña - Ant Man) who told them that it really needed doctors to look at. After given some stitches and medicines, they allowed Angela to go home.

Following day, a raven seemed to start following Angela and it flew inside the bus where Angela and Pete were in. It also pecked her finger making things worse on the cut. At night, she seemed to be drunk and fainted. Angela woke up after a while but Pete and Roger decided she must go to the hospital again. When she was finally released, during the drive back to her home, somehow she managed to hijack the wheels and caused accident, making her into a coma, while Pete and Roger only having bruises. After 40 days, Father Lozano encouraged Roger to unplug the life support. However, once the last rites completed, Angela came back to life.

This was where the scary part would begin as Angela now started to show signs of being possessed. She was able to speak Aramaic, managed to be in 2 places at same time and convinced other patients to do violent acts among themselves including murder and suicide. The psychiatric doctor Richards (played by Kathleen Robertson) who was treating her decided that it would be best to let Angela out of the hospital.

The time is now in sync with the start of the movie where Cardinal Bruun has decided to come to US and perform exorcism.

So can Cardinal Bruun helped Angela? How will Peter and Roger cope up with such heavy burden of seeing Angela possessed? Find them all till the completion of the movie. 

End of Brief Story Line

I have to admit that there were very very few scary moments in this movie. I was hoping for a good old fashion scary possession movie but this one rather disappointed me. Furthermore, they were trying to make some of the scenes as found footage but it just made the movie odd. (I mentioned about found footage camera in my other review of "Project Almanac"). I mean if you want to make it found footage, then do it in full.

And finally the ending. OMG, I do not know what they had in mind when they prepared the ending. I personally think it was a foolish idea to make it that way. But maybe the film maker was thinking it was a good way to finish it off? Not sure. Anyway other horror movies would definitely do it differently or wait till the very end to show the surprising twist. I usually have an open mind when watching movies and I generally would always be able to see something good in a movie no matter how bad it was reviewed by critics. But I have to say that I root for them in this case.

So if you got nothing better to do and happened to stumble this movie on HBO, you can choose to see it and maybe give me an idea or two whether I am too harsh on this movie. Or maybe you can just ignore and see other movies which I strongly believe would be worth your time. I hope you are not making the same mistake that I did when I chose to watch it. 

Mike's movie moments rating: 2 out 5 stars

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