Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism

Godless is a sad drama pretending to be inspired by an actual event. For the people around her, the object of the titular exorcism – a fragile girl traumatized by a major tragedy in her life – is a harmless, suffering victim of fate, while her exorcist is a fanatical maniac and violent swine. The brief horror interludes in the form of demonic apparitions are intended to scare with their powerful volume, but they don’t work at all. The filmmakers try to pass Godless off as a horror movie, which is fraud, and they have no idea how to build an effective drama. [Sitges Film Festival] (14.10.2023)

Godless addresses an actual tragic case from 1993, when a group of religious fanatics performed an exorcism on a mentally ill woman who was needlessly subjected to psychological torture and physical abuse. It is good that the film deals with the subject of potentially harmful deeds committed by people acting in blind accordance with their faith and good intentions, though they approach it from the wrong angle. The film contains the seeds of an emotionally rich psychological drama, but the filmmakers somewhat superfluously tried to pull an exorcism horror element out of the story (through rather poorly and cheaply rendered satanic visions and very dull jump scares). Until the very end, the viewer is battered with the thought of whether the victim was possessed by the devil after all, but this deliberate ambiguity causes confusion in the film’s tone, diminishes its power and makes it unintentionally ridiculous in places. (11.10.2023)