In 2015, the world saw the first solo project of director Mark Neveldine - the thriller Vatican Records. Previously, Mark in tandem with Brian Taylor worked on the films "Gamer" and "Adrenaline." The actors involved in the first plan roles: O. T. Dudley, M. Pena, C. Robertson, who participated in the Neveldine project “Vatican Records” , are already quite famous in the world of cinema.
Fair criticism
It is difficult to associate the project of Mark Neveldine with films that have become classics of the genre. The actors involved in the filming process compared the film The Vatican Records to the Exorcist, although professional critics drew attention to the lack of academicity and the excess of surrealistic exploit pathos. Almost all the characters of the film are simplified almost to the level of comics: the black priest performed by Jimon Honsu, twice nominated for an Oscar, is quite predictable, the background is decorated with the texture of ex-movie stars Daniel Bernhardt and Michael Pare, and in the episodes the Russian pop manages to flash singer Alexey Vorobyov.
Plot
The Vatican Records is a film whose plot is not original and even secondary. The main character is a young, attractive Angela (actress Olivia Dudley), on her next birthday, manages to deeply injure her finger with a knife. It is noteworthy that the raven immediately tries to tear up the wound, it is not clear where it came from. A boyfriend of a girl named Pete (D.P. Amedori), along with a caring father performed by Dougray Scott, immediately transport the main character to the hospital. And from this fateful moment, the girl is radically changing. Watching the transformation of the ward, the priest, the ex-soldier Father Lozano (actor Michael Pena), realizes that Angela is obsessed and turns to the Vatican, hoping for urgent help.
Attention to the psychological aspect
The characters of the horror film “Vatican Records”, the actors involved in the project, embodied on the screen to the best of their abilities and talent. It’s not their fault that individual characters turned out superficial, just the stories of some characters suggested a more serious psychological study. For example, Bishop Brun, to whom the Vatican entrusts the case to an unhappy obsessed. He was embodied on the screen by Peter Andersson, an actor familiar to the audience from the films The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The character was conceived as a complex person. He himself in an early adolescence was obsessed with a demon and his new encounter with an ancient evil was predetermined. But a rather interesting plot branch, unfortunately, did not receive any development.
Three actors, not counting Angela
The image of the ex-soldier, and now the exorcist priest, boyfriend of Angela and her father was embodied in the film "Vatican Records" by actors long known to the world cinema community. The artist, who played the role of a warrior who experienced the fire of all the hot spots on the planet, but who later decided to become a priest, is familiar to viewers from the TV series Profiler, the films The New York Police and Ant-Man. Unfortunately, the creators did not allow Michael to demonstrate his dramatic talent in full. The story of his hero is not fully developed, one might say, barely marked. The images of Angela's friend and her father are also deprived, between which a conflict could arise - they are two opposites, but both selflessly love the main character. Dougray Scott, whose filmography is replete with blockbusters: “Ripley's Game”, “Hitman”, “Mission Impossible”, “Doctor Who” - rather passively interacts in tandem with his daughter, mainly expressing constant and obsessive anxiety. John Patrick Amedori - Angela’s boyfriend, the viewer remembers from the films “Thinking Like a Criminal”, “Butterfly Effect”, but in this picture he seems infantile and often fades into the background.
The main female role
One gets the impression that the creators deliberately sacrificed all possible branches of the storyline for the sake of the story of the main character - the obsessed Angela. Therefore, actress Olivia Taylor Dudley had the opportunity to demonstrate the full range of her acting talent. And she coped with her task brilliantly. The scenes in which her heroine was assigned the leading role are rightfully considered the most creepy in the film. But the episodes in which the actress interacts with other actors look much weaker, the reason for this may be the fragmentation of the script, the lack of teamwork of the film's ensemble. Therefore, Angela-Dudley as an obsessed - convincing, good and really terrifying, and the usual girl Angela - unexpressive and bland. In addition to this role, Olivia Taylor Dudley is familiar to a wide audience by the film “Forbidden Zone”.
The creators did not succeed in an outstanding tragedy, because, in addition to the main character, there is a lack of the game of first-order actors. But fans of thrillers will certainly appreciate the tense and sinister atmosphere of the film.