WHEN I ENCOUNTERED A BULLY DURING my school years, I would always wonder how their parents could allow such behavior in their child. I did not understand those individuals who abused others until I got older and discovered many abusers were abused themselves. Maybe I was naïve; but any act of meanness I saw on display, I attributed it to poor parenting. Or to be more exact, having mean parents. In some cases, I was correct; however, there were some instances where the level of meanness was so intense that I could not comprehend parents being at such a level. There was a student in one of my classes in elementary school who took pleasure in torturing animals. I still remember when he set fire to a cat’s tail and watched the cat scamper around before it was consumed completely by the flames. It was after school hours, and I only came upon him when I was cutting through the alley to get to a food market. Having seen how much pleasure he took in watching the cat suffer, I never went near him throughout the rest of the school year. Because I was so young, I could not comprehend how two adults could create such an evil child. It was because of that act that I started believing some people were just born evil.      IT WAS NOT UNTIL HIGH SCHOOL, when I came to the belief that everyone was born with good and evil in them; they had the free will to decide which they wanted to become. Some students maintained an optimistic attitude about certain individuals, giving them the benefit of the doubt. High school killed that process for me; the things I saw were nothing more than pure meanness. There were a couple of boys who had gym class with me, and they were just awful. They took such pleasure in picking on a mentally challenged classmate, it was horrific to see. One of the things they liked to do was throw a basketball at the boy to try and knock him down or at least into a wall. The students who witnessed this would always laugh along with these two boys. I always wondered if they found such a horrible act funny or were afraid not to laugh because it could have set them up to be the next target. There were many days I dreaded having to go to gym class. From my past experiences and the knowledge, I have acquired, I am open to other suggestions on the origin of a person’s evilness. This horror thriller film does present a possible reason.      UNDER THE DIRECT AUTHORITY OF THE pope, Father Gabriel Amorth’s, played by Russell Crowe (A Beautiful Mind, Boy Erased), position is to investigate incidents of demonic possession. His latest case would unearth a deep dark secret that he might never come back from. With Daniel Zovatta (Don’t Breathe, Station Eleven-TV) as Father Esquibel, Alex Essoe (Doctor Sleep, The Edge of Sleep-TV) as Julia, Franco Nero (Django Unchained, John Wick: Chapter 2) as The Pope and newcomer Peter DeSouza-Feighoney as Henry; this story inspired by the files of Father Amorth earned a passing grade because of Russell Crowe. He was excellent in the role, trying to keep the story from falling into a generic typical exorcist plot. The pacing was a bit uneven; I felt there could have been a tighter focus on creating a more terrifying scene. At one point, it felt like the writers and director went on automatic because scenes seemed to be like previous ones. If it was not for Russell’s performance, I would have gotten bored, despite me enjoying the wonderful sets and props. Having no knowledge about Father Amorth and having now seen this film, I am curious to hear about some of his other cases.

2 1/2 stars