Official Synopsis
In 1989, emergency responders received a 9-1-1 call from Maria Rossi confessing to three brutal murders. Twenty years later, her daughter Isabella (Fernanda Andrade, “Fallen”) seeks to understand what really happened that night, traveling to the Centrino Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Italy where her mother has been locked away. When Isabella recruits two young men to cure her mother using unconventional methods, they discover the horrifying truth. Now Isabella must face pure evil or forsake her soul.
The beginning of this film shows some solid promise. Hell, even up to the middle the film shows some promise. It’s the ending that leaves you scratching your head wanting to know what the heck just happened. And that’s not ‘what the heck just happened’ in a good way.
So, the beginning of the film we learn that Maria Rossi goes bonkers during what you figure out quickly is an exorcism and ends up brutally murdering three people. She is snatched up by the Vatican and put away in Rome until they can figure out how to help her (if they want to help her). Her young daughter, Isabella (Fernanda Andrade), decides that she will help a filmmaker out by putting the pieces of the puzzle together on why her mother went nuts. She is offered time with her mom to talk with her briefly about things. Maria (Suzan Crowley) is incoherent and spouts off things that she shouldn’t know about Isabella. Freaked out, Isabella seeks the help of two rogue priests who do back alley exorcisms using non-church regulated methods. When they go to visit Maria with these methods, she goes nuts and something happens to the four of them (that’s including the camera guy).
I will stop there, as I don’t want to give anything away.
Like I said before, the beginning of the film showed a lot of promise, as did the point where I stopped in the above paragraph. It’s like the filmmakers had this spectacular idea using one of the more intriguing religious taboo issues. Exorcism and possession is one of the scariest and definitely one of the most controversial issues in religion today. Using that and building it up properly to the first climax in the film was done brilliantly.
Regretfully, after that point the film seems to get lost. It’s as if the filmmakers really had nothing else put together. They didn’t know what they wanted to do with the setup and didn’t use it properly. The ending is a complete copout. You will leave the film feeling somewhat cheated because your emotions were set up for a spectacular ending featuring Maria’s character, but nothing comes out of it. In fact, it seems like it was just rushed to end without purpose. It was very odd and extremely dissatisfying. I wanted to know more about Maria’s condition and conclusion, but we never truly get that beef of the story. It was disappointing.
Anyway, if you are intrigued by exorcism and possession then you’re going to adore the first half of this film. If you want something beyond that then you’re going to be disappointed with what is delivered.
This could have been something cool and horrifying.
Speaking of cool, though, the Blu-ray portion of this film is actually pretty solid. While the film certainly has that video look and feel to it, to make it ‘more real’ to the audience, the HD transfer magnifies the ‘horror’ quite a bit. You get the tiny, intricate details in the faces of the group and the surrounding environments. You can credit good lighting and good transfer for these things. There is little to no transfer graininess in the picture, and if there is some then it’s purposeful for the video format. It’s a solid transfer that does well in both picture and in audio (coming at you in 5.1 DTS-HD).
Regretfully, there are no special features.