A less than scary blend of a found footage horror movie ala "Paranormal Activity" and a spineless Exorcist/Omen rip-off, THE VATICAN TAPES strands some good actors on the wrong wide of Satan.
Dependable actor Michael Pena (Antman, World Trade Center) stars as Father Lozano, a priest who happens to bump into Angela and her family at the hospital.
It's during the first of one of an escalating series of mishaps in which Angela (Olivia Taylor Dudley), her Dad Roger (Dougray Scott) and fiance Pete (John Patrick Amedori) watch their lives spiral.
It seems that a nasty demon has hold of Angela after she spends 40 days in a coma in her longest hospital pop in. (oooh...40 days, a biblical reference, cue the music!!)
Not nasty or scary enough to earn an R rating, the scares are worn down to a rather dull variety of accidents and levitations.
This is one of those movies where anyone around Angela appears to be in serious danger, but our main characters seem blithely ignorant.
I dont know about you, but after a couple evil stares, baby threatening incidents and deep voiced demon episodes, I'm going to steer clear of Angela....
Of course, the music swells, the Vatican assigns a ponderous holy man to come help and the demon turns out to be not just a run of the mill spirit. It's very predictable.
Poor Pena works hard, as does Scott in a one note role.
I'll give the writers credit for taking the last few minutes in a crazy, explosive direction that I didn't see coming. It's ballsy.
Maybe they were hoping for a sequel! With an $8 million budget and barely $1 million at the box office, those hopes got dashed along with the holy water.
We'll give it a ho hum D.
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