The Vatican Tapes is about a California girl who is possessed. How can you tell? She hates hospitals, slaps her boyfriend’s butt, loves her dad and gets really aggressive when she gets shoved on the bus. Wait! Is everyone possessed? What makes the movie unrealistic is that no one seems to drive in The Vatican Tapes even though it takes place in CA. Who takes public transportation in CA? And they are frequently shown taking cabs or walking? OK, other things happen too: black birds seem to be attracted to her, she appears in two places at once and things get homicidal.
There is nothing more that I hate than the promise of a fake documentary or found footage horror movie, but no follow through. The Vatican Tapes has the home video, occasional surveillance footage or news coverage, but that isn’t the same thing, and it isn’t enough, people. It isn’t! Shame on you!
The Vatican Tapes must have had a great budget because it attracted some genuinely good actors: Dougray Scott, who must have an epic mortgage to appear in this and Taken 3, Michael Pena, Djimon Hounsou and Kathleen Robertson. To be fair, the star and the possessed Olivia Taylor Dudley does a good job with what she is given. She shows a lot of nuance as she is supposed to ridiculously transform from ordinary 25 year-old woman to scared, losing herself possessed woman to completely possessed and crazed to something else.
If The Vatican Tapes started at the 1 hour 12 min mark, it would make a great movie or even tv series, but it is 91 minutes long so that means that only 29 minutes of The Vatican Tapes is awesome. The Vatican Tapes stops just when the apocalypse is supposed to begin. Boo hiss! I want my apocalypse and demand a sequel better than the original.
SPOILERS
This possessed girl isn’t your average possessed girl. SHE IS THE ANTI-CHRIST, AND IT IS THE BEGINNING OF THE BIBLICAL APOCALYPSE!!!! Honestly for the majority of The Vatican Tapes, the movie gives no clue except for a brief scene in the opening when she is writing and looking at her computer screen, the flock of black birds and her domination of the people in the mental institution that this is the direction that the plot was heading, but when the exorcism starts, it is clear. The Vatican Tapes makes the character powerless and unaware that this is what is happening to her, but spends way too much time belaboring this point instead of giving us the good stuff: world domination! The Vatican Tapes basically took the premise of the last season of Angel, but got distracted by creating the standard, boring possession movie for the majority of The Vatican Tapes. What a missed opportunity. I would have loved a secular take on the Biblical apocalypse.
