When he was crafting The Order, director Brian Helgeland forgot the cardinal rule of supernatural thrillers. They have to be scary.
The Exorcist, The Omen and Poltergeist are classics because they take their audiences on terrifying journeys. You don't have to believe in the supernatural to enjoy the thrills - you just have to suspend disbelief.
The Order, which opened in town yesterday, has an intriguing premise.
According to Medieval legends there is a being caught somewhere between good and evil whose role it is to forgive the abominable sinners the Catholic Church turns away.
He is called the Sin Eater and his ability to absorb the transgressions of others gives him extended life, if not immortality.
Alex Bernier (Heath Ledger) is a young priest who belongs to an order of the Catholic Church that has turned its back on the modernization of recent Vatican Councils.
They prefer teachings rooted in the Dark Ages to those that emerged from the Age of Enlightenment.
When the head of the order, who also happens to be Alex's mentor, commits suicide, the priest travels to Rome to discover what would have driven the man to take his own life.
In Catholic theology that means certain damnation.
Before Alex can say the devil made him do it, he learns of the existence of a perverse underground cult that quite literally operates under the streets of Rome.
This particular order has a lot to do with debauchery, pagan rituals and obscene religious practices, but they are the only people who can lead Alex to the Sin Eater (Benno Furmann).
It will surprise no one that this shadowy figure wants to meet Alex even more than the cleric wants to meet him.
Alex is not alone in Rome.
In tow are his best friend, a burly British exorcist named Thomas Garrett (Mark Addy) and Mara Sinclair (Shannyn Sossamon), a suicidal psychic who has been lusting after Alex since he cast devils out of her brother.
Helgeland, who wrote and directed The Order, needed to spend much more effort orchestrating suspense, thrills and shocks and far less dispensing religious mumbo-jumbo. He knows these films need snarling Dobermans who jump out of dark places, creepy demon children who stalk the hero and shadowy characters who are the opposite of what they seem.
They're all neatly tucked away in The Order but they fail to create truly nightmarish moments or any major surprises.
Ledger, Sossamon and Addy, who were all in Helgeland's A Knight's Tale, turn in solid performances but their characters are too wafer-thin to make us care what happens to them.
The Order collapses under its own pretensions.
Instead of eliciting screams, it produces only yawns.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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