Badly affected by the bloodshed and horrible crimes of the world war II against innocents, Father Lankester Merrin, lost his faith and travels to Africa, where he works as an archaeologist, the thing that brings terrible for him, as he is asked to check a Byzantine church that found under earth, where he has to restore his faith, in order to face the evil force.
Reams of tedious exposition finally give way to a random jumble of horror movie clichés, rising to a shrill pitch of hysteria that is never remotely frightening.
As shocking as an Dokken album cover and, finally, as pious as The Passion of the Christ.
Toronto Star
August 23, 2004
Never feels like anything other than generic, brain-dead, Dolby-jolt, multiplex hackwork -- I kept expecting Skarsgard's habitually catacomb-prowling Merrin to bump flashlights with Lara Croft.
The serious Catholic themes that made the original film genuinely disturbing have been flattened out into a cartoonish backstory pitting Merrin against Nazi storm troopers.
