You know for a movie graded "rotten" on RottenTomatoes at 20%, I actually myself sorta liking THE RITE w/ Anthony Hopkins.

It's an EXORCIST rip-off, but a pretty good one for the right reasons. It tries to create a gracious pace, not so frantic as modern thrillers demand apparently, try to create a mood and atmosphere, and most importantly follows a rule that comic book movies regularly deploy: Accept a concept you yourself might as fantasy whether demonic possession or a guy dressing up as a bat to fight crime, and accept it as reality and believe it, and your audience will follow.

I liked some of the proceduralism of exorcisms thru Hopkins which intrigued me and unlike most movies dealings with demons and the supernatuarl, this isn't a grand battle for live or death told in cartoonish fashion that such movies tend to be but like EXORCIST more localized evil, demons acting like serial killers and God aint helping, but his God Cops (Priests) will stop them. The only touch of the fantastical was a bunch of cockroaches flooding Hopkins' home, otherwise RITE felt sorta grounded in reality in dealing with something from the great Outstanding.

(My favorite scene is when it turns out a possessed boy is haunted by his demon: A frog, which Hopkins throws into an incinerator. What if that frog was some poor prince still waiting for his kiss? What if it was Prince?)

I even liked the skeptic priest protagonist, who himself has a fascinating origin story: His dad was a mortician, and operated his business from home. His dad is Rutger Hauer, and they both did the job on his mother when she died, when said hero was just a kid.

That's some hardcore shit. That demon never stood a chance.

Not a great movie, not really an exceptional one, but decent and better than it's reputation claims.