‘Shadow of God’ Subverts Exorcism Cliches With Tired Anti-Religious Cliches
(REVIEW) Exorcism movies are everywhere these days, yet rarely are any memorable. Within the last few years alone we’ve gotten multiple entries from the “Conjuring” universe, “The Pope’s Exorcist,” “Exorcism: Believer,”, “The Exorcism” and “The Deliverance”. This year, we’re getting “Shadow of God,” “The Ritual” and “The Conjuring: Last Rites.”
Most of these merely recycle exorcist cliches without doing anything terribly new or interesting. Unlike superhero films, which have reinvented themselves every 20 or so years while still keeping their core appeal intact, exorcist movies seem stuck. “The Conjuring” movies seem to have done the best, taking the genre and turning it into a fun popcorn fare. But the number of new exorcism movies shows there’s still a desire for new material in this space.
The new Shudder Original film “Shadow of God” hopes to shake up the genre. Shudder is a new streaming service dedicated to horror content. Director Michael Peterson discussed with the Points of Reviews outlet how the film’s subversion of exorcism tropes was its appeal for him.
“Exorcist movies have been done so many times. … It’s a very predictable subgenre. But this was dealing with what I thought were provocative ideas,” he said.
According to Points of Reviews that questioning wasn’t abstract. Some crew members, imn fact, left the project after reading the script.
“There were a handful of crew that were like, ‘Oh, I can’t work on this,’ Peterson added. “I don’t think it supports my belief system. I don’t like what it’s saying.’ Rather than seeing that as a setback, Peterson took it as a sign they were onto something. ‘To me, that was amazing – and a thumbs up that we were probably on the right path.’”
Unfortunately, the film that comes out of this is largely underwhelming. While there are moments of self-aware fun and smart visuals, the twists on exorcism cliches merely make way for more tiresome and less entertaining ones.
The film follows Father Mason Harper (played by Mark O’Brien), a Vatican exorcist who goes home after multiple of his colleagues are mysteriously killed. There, he is stunned to find his long-dead father has returned. As Mason tries to exorcise what he believes is a demon from his father he comes to believe his father might be possessed by something more holy, maybe even God.
The film seesaws between entertainingly self-aware and irritatingly clumsy. When it’s navigating the exorcism movie cliches with sarcasm and using inventive visuals, the movie works. The opening scene, where Harper exhales on a cigarette during an exorcism and sighs, “Just leave the poor child be and be done with this already. We all know how this ends” followed by “Now you’re just f—-ing me off” is cool.
The idea of a mystery about exorcists being murdered is cool. The shots of crooked crosses and Jesus statue with dead bugs around, giving a strong atmosphere of the sacred twisted by the profane, are deeply evocative. As is the scene with Harper falling into the white space through a cross.
But when it’s attempting to reinvent the exorcism wheel or make a serious point, the film quickly gets dull. Lines of dialogue are consistently on the nose. When the film wants to tell us that Harper won't question his faith because he’s using it as a suit of armor against his doubts, it does so by having Harper say he’s using his faith as a suit of armor against his doubts (something people who are using their faith as a suit of armor against their doubts typically don’t admit to themselves, let alone other people).
Likewise, when the film wants to draw the connection between Harper’s abusive father and God being an abusive father, it does so by having the devil say just spell it out for us outright.
This ham-fisted approach would have been forgivable if it was at least done in the service of something original. Instead, “Shadow of God” subverts exorcist movie cliches merely so it can indulge in “heaven is the real bad guy” cliches that we’ve seen everywhere from “Lucifer” to “Preacher” to “Supernatural” to “Hazbin Hotel.” Similarly, its “evil church/cult” cliches are so ubiquitous in pop culture that Rain Wilson pointed it out on X: “I do think there is an anti-Christian bias in Hollywood. As soon as the David character in ‘The Last of Us’ started reading from the Bible I knew that he was going to be a horrific villain. Could there be a Bible-reading preacher on a show who is actually loving and kind?”
Its anti-religious message feels particularly retrograde and unthoughtful in a time when study upon study comes out about how important religion is to human flourishing. A recent New York Times article with the headline “Americans Haven’t Found a Satisfying Alternative to Religion” runs down a bunch of the data:
Pew’s findings corroborate that idea: Actively religious people tend to report they are happier than people who don’t practice religion. Religious Americans are healthier, too. They are significantly less likely to be depressed or to die by suicide, alcoholism, cancer, cardiovascular illness or other causes. In a long-term study, doctors at Harvard found that women who attended religious services once a week were 33 percent less likely to die prematurely than women who never attended. That’s because, said Tyler J. VanderWeele, an author on the Harvard study, “they had higher levels of social support, better health behaviors and greater optimism about the future.”
Religiously affiliated Americans are more likely to feel gratitude (by 23 percentage points), spiritual peace (by 27 points) and “a deep sense of connection with humanity” (by 15 points) regularly than people without a religious affiliation, researchers found this year. The latter is particularly important: Positive relationships are the single most important predictor of well-being, according to the longest-running study on human happiness in the world.”
This doesn’t mean that there’s no place for anti-religious movies. There are also plenty of people (as the article notes) who are non-religious and doing just fine. Many people have had abusive abusive religious parents and religious communities. It makes sense for such a person to tell a metaphorical story about God being an abusive dad. But by telling the story with strawmen and hackneyed dialogue, the story lacks redemptive power. For the religious, it’s easy to dismiss. For the religiously wounded, it reinforces stereotypes that will retard working through their trauma rather than assist it. This is particularly obvious where it implies forgiveness is a bad thing, even though the research strongly supports that forgiveness is important for your mental and physical health.
“Shadow of God” is stuck between several different possible movies and doesn’t commit to any of them effectively. It could have been an entertainingly self-aware exorcism movie, but it has too few scenes where it embraces that winking glee for the cliches. It could have subverted the cliches with its own original ideas, but few of its ideas are original. Even if its ideas weren’t original it could have made up for it with thoughtful and nuanced dialogue to explore familiar ground. But its writing is too wooden and heavy-handed for that.
“Shadow of God” is streaming now exclusively on Shudder.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.