I’m seldom seduced by the title of a film. This one, called The Vatican Tapes, flung me into expectations. I was imagining being ushered into trapdoors and secret rooms hidden by ancient carvings and finding therein labyrinthine hallways leading to archives, hiding the materiality of faith. I was looking to discovering affirmation by the Church—not of miracles, but of the documented appearances of demons. In short, I was excited by the prospect that someone has exhumed the secrets of the Vatican and is now on a rampage to divulge everything.
We must admit that the Vatican is one of the most exciting locales for ghost- and demon-hunting. In those countless windows and passages seem to lurk shadows fighting the light. While the good and the evil remain notions in lecture halls, the ancient spaces in the Vatican appear ready to actualize their representations.
The Vatican Tapes, however, does not linger long enough in that city but flies us off to the more mundane setting in the US. A local priest, Fr. Lozano, and a Vatican-based priest, Cardinal Bruun, face the case of a young girl who starts out as a lovely and quiet person until a raven starts appearing in her life. The film opens where Angela, the girl, is talking with her father, a military man who, as the conversation implies, has always been an absentee father. Roger Holmes, the father, is present at Angela’s birthday and meets up uncomfortably with his daughter’s boyfriend, Pete. A freak accident involving a knife used to cut Angela’s birthday cake leads to the young woman being brought to the emergency room. From here ensue many odd events until the family is persuaded to bring Angela to a sanatorium. Fr. Lozano enters the picture and sees a different case. From afar, no less than from the Vatican, Cardinal Bruun talks with his assistant. The cardinal leaves for the States and, upon arrival, announces his mission to conduct an exorcism.
The problem with The Vatican Tapes is that the Vatican becomes merely a modifier and not a place. The film has the burden also of following the older and truly terrifying The Exorcist, from the pen of William Peter Blatty and directed by William Friedkin. Anything that follows that classic 1973 film has the tendency to be viewed as a copycat.
Indeed, when the Anti-Christ issue is brought to the fore, The Vatican Tapes, directed by Mark Neveldine, is turned into a light polemic. There is as well a problem with how the personality of Cardinal Bruun is fleshed out. A tad psychotic and violent, Bruun does not seem to fit the character of an exorcist. He is no match to the memory of Fr. Merrin in the person of the great actor, Max von Sydow. When this exorcist in that old film appears at the doorway of the MacNeil residence, we know the Devil upstairs senses the presence of his equal.
Last week my editor was surprised when I turned in a review of Attack on Titan. He was expecting a review of The Love Affair, which stars Dawn Zulueta, Richard Gomez and Bea Alonzo. I wanted to tell my editor how a mainstream film from a mainstream production company is presently, by reverse, a cultivated taste.
But I was also honest to him with regard to his point that what I sent in was a tongue-in-cheek review of the said Japanese film. Well, this week, I opted for exorcism than a love affair.
This week, however, a sequel to Attack on Titan, which baffled me, has just been announced. I had many questions when I reviewed that first film because I didn’t see the rationale why the giants were devouring humans. You know, violence without social history is like carrot cake without the white icing, or a blueberry cheesecake without the yummy cream cheese.
Indeed, many who watched the movie without the aid of the manga that gave birth to the giants and the human heroes were asking for answers.
Records show that Attack on Titan was successful at the box office. A news release on the sequel says: “Attack on Titan 2: End of the World picks up where the first movie left off, with the newly trained group of soldiers having learned to use the “Maneuver Gear” to fight against the Titans, and with Eren mysteriously surviving after being eaten by a Titan.
Eren and the others set out on a mission to restore the wall that had been destroyed by a colossal Titan, but they’re suddenly faced with a quagmire when they’re attacked by a horde of Titans.
Shikishima, the Titan-slaying captain of the Scout Regiment, arrives to save the day, but the Titans show no sign of letting up. During the battle, Eren is badly injured and in the process of saving his friend Armin, he’s swallowed whole by a Titan. Just as all hope seems to be lost, a mysterious Titan with black hair suddenly appears and begins annihilating the other Titans. If this mission fails, it will spell the end of humanity. Why did the Titans appear? Why do people continue to fight? The last counterattack to save human civilization is about to begin.”
Attack on Titan 2: End of the World will open in local cinemas on September 23, from Pioneer Films.
The film is from Studio Toho and directed by acclaimed Japanese director Shinji Higuchi and written by Yusuke Watanabe.