I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

In Los Angeles, Angela Holmes (Olivia Dudley) is a happy young woman, pride and joy of her father Colonel Roger Holmes (Dougray Scott) and in love with her boyfriend Peter "Pete" Smith (John Patrick Amedori). On her birthday party, she cuts her hand and Roger and Peter take her to the hospital. When she returns home, she has a seizure and they drive her back to the hospital. Then Angela is discharged but she pulls the wheel of the taxi causing a serious accident. She returns in coma to the hospital. Forty days later, she has no response and Father Oscar Lozano (Michael Peña) convinces Roger to unplug the life support system. Out of the blue, she awakes in perfect health. Soon Angela shows signs of demoniac possession and the Vatican sends Cardinal Bruun (Peter Andersson) to perform an exorcism to save her soul. Will there be time to save her body?"The Vatican Tapes" is a decent and underrated horror film, one of the best about exorcism. The plot is based on Catholic beliefs but is engaging. Most of the cast is excellent and has good performances; maybe only Michael Peña has an inexpressive performance. The conclusion has an open end maybe with the intention of a sequel. But in general, "The Vatican Tapes" is satisfactory with an appropriate use of Handycam or surveillance video. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Exorcistas do Vaticano" (Exorcists from the Vatican")

You'd get more chills from standing in front of your open refrigerator in the hottest part of Summer! Calling this movie a 'generic Exorcist' is an insult to that movie!So, let me help you not to waste your time... Oh no! Here comes the anti-Christ, and she's got perfect hair with a perfect part! That's it! Now you can go rent something worth watching, or do what I did and rent it from your local library, so you don't waste your money! If you want to have your own MST3K (Mystery Science Theater 3000) party, then this might be a winner that will gain plenty of laughs!Hmm.. and I smell bad fish... "Prerecorded videotape supplied by CBN ©2008 Christian Broadcasting Network Inc." Let's jump on the 'Found Footage' bandwagon and milk that fad! I guess they had to put something in there to convince people they should go see it! There's even videos on You Tube discussing how 'real' it is. *sigh* Justin Chang's review on Variety says, "For all that, "The Vatican Tapes" never becomes anything more than straight-up Catholic exploitation, pure and unapologetic." Yeah!It did get a reaction from me when the effects made it seem she almost tore her arms off, when she very severely dislocated them. I said, "Ugh!" I guess it was her later revealed healing ability that meant a few minutes later she showed no sign of injury! Or, perhaps she was creating a scary illusion? Anyway... So much for realism!About the only good things I can say is the special effects were pretty well done and the acting and direction not so terrible. Real shame about the script!

Seriously now - I can't believe someone at Lionsgate actually approved this horrible production.This is one of those movies that you watch and then suddenly the end credits appear and you ask yourself "what the f...". I mean, had it at least been scary. Or surprising. Or anything... No plot, just a sequence of exorcism or possession scenes that are very short, un- scary and not even surprising or mysterious. No hidden message, no good guys or bad guys, just a boring possession. No point at the end, no development during the movie... just people doing things while being shot by a camera and then it ends - with simply nothing really happening or any hint of anything.Quite boring, pointless and the acting is far from convincing.The horror is the fact this film was ever released. It truly scares me that there's someone who actually approved this!

Well, this little project isn't going especially well so far, but this is the icing on the God damned cake. This movie is, surprisingly, not a found footage movie, but it incorporates found footage elements for no real reason other than to justify the "tapes" part of the title. What we have here is essentially the worst part of every exorcism movie made since the 70s smashed together in a plot that could generously be described as "unclear". There are so many things happening, and a relatively short amount of time to crush it all into, that it becomes a chaotic mess.The acting is lousy, I don't know what to say there, but I don't even necessarily blame the actors on this one. At least not entirely. There are a couple of familiar faces in Michael Peña (Fury), and Djimon Hounsou (Guardian's of the Galaxy) but even they can't really pull this movie together. The weak script, coupled with the off-the-wall style of director Mark Neveldine (Crank), really make for a lousy pairing. Neveldine-Taylor proved that they have a really frantic style of film making, and that really doesn't translate over to horror movies, particularly an exorcism movie.The exorcism scene consists of the victim screaming for a really long time, coupled with some shouting about an egg, and the usual disgusting dislocation and body contortion that have become a staple of movies like this. That said, the dislocating scene is probably one of the hardest to watch in the movie, and really did make my skin crawl. However, it's become such a common thing in movies like this that I don't want to give it too much credit.The rest of the "scary" scenes in the movie really fall flat, a police officer sees a raven and smashes two light bulbs into his eyes, which comes off as way funnier than it was supposed to. As well, you have a scene where a room full of patients in a mental hospital hear the word of the devil and kill each other and themselves, which is obviously in really great taste (read that sarcastically).One last thing that I need to harp on here is the f**king tapes. When this movie does use "found footage", it puts frames, time codes, blinking lights, and all the usual crap that lazy film makers put on their movies to make it look like its "from a camera", and it's always wrong.So, in the end the girl becomes the antichrist and goes around "parodying" Jesus (apparently) to make everyone worship here, yada yada yada, evil wins and this movie f**king sucks. Skip it.www.barleydoeshorror.com