Gothic horror films that
exploit religious dogma, particularly Catholicism, are almost a sub-genre, with
"The Exorcist" and "The Omen" still the standard bearers.
Brian Helgeland's "The Order" zealously follows in their wake, with
baroque images and all manner of metaphoric mayhem, from brandished crosses to
dead-of-night secret burials in windstorms. The writer of "L.A.
Confidential" is too talented to dismiss, but the film-convention savvy and
originality he brought to his noir homage gets lost in the dark (literally)
abyss of "The Order." Then again, Helgeland was also the scripter for
the ill-fated "The Postman," another film not known for its subtlety.
The order is a tiny group of priests who adhere to
arcane Catholicism: They believe in stigmata, exorcism, the Latin Mass and in a
hush-hush ancient practice called "sin eating." When an old member of
the sect is killed in Rome — the church claims his death is a suicide, which
denies him a Christian burial — it falls to a pair of younger priests, Alex
(Heath Ledger, reunited with Helgeland after "A Knight's Tale") and
William (Benno Furmann) to investigate. They discover Thomas, an attractive sin
eater (Mark Addy), a man whose mortality dates to the construction of St.
Peter's Basilica. Bitter at the church for excommunicating his brother and
denying him last rites, Thomas has become an avenging angel of sorts for the
church's outcasts: He ingests the sins of the church's excommunicants and thus
grants them absolution. This, of course, is not without its drawbacks. Not only
must Thomas live for centuries, he must also carry the burden of untold sins.
It's become a heavy load, and he's ready to pass the torch to another young and
hunky rebel priest.
Sounds heady and intriguing. Too bad Helgeland didn't
trust the story enough to make a small, theologically themed thriller (like,
say, Asnieszka Holland's flawed but interesting "The Third Miracle").
Instead, Helgeland opts for an all-out horror fest with slasher film effects
such as knives flying from walls, a goth dungeon where the priests witness a
hanging and, most bizarre of all, a literal depiction of sin. Who knew it looked
like a jellyfish as it swirls out of one soul before wrapping its tentacles
around another?
With lines such as "I'm an insult to the church;
an embarrassment" and "Sometimes when you look into the abyss, the
abyss looks back at you," not to mention talk of priestly sex,
excommunication, suicide and shoddy scaffolding during the building of St.
Peter's that results in an industrial accident, "The Order" likely
made more than a few people nervous, especially at a time when the Catholic
Church is hardly eager to have its ancient embarrassments dredged up in a
Hollywood movie. Could that have anything to do with dumping the film in
theaters without screening it for the press beforehand? Possibly. Or maybe it
was simply because "The Order" is schlock that could and should have
been better
