The Horror Show
The Crucifixion
by Xavier Gens
Xavier Gens’ demonic possession drama, The Crucifixion, is a brisk 90-minute movie, which every well-versed horror aficionado will find decent, and at the same time, excruciatingly long.
It’s been a decade since Gens’ Frontiers stirred up waves of excitement amongst horror fans with its gore-soaked European twist. That said, it is hard to take up that a filmmaker who once made something so creatively terrifying stands behind The Crucifixion, a mediocre horror opus that doesn’t really break any new ground, as it is unfortunately lacking life.
Co-written by Chad and Carey W. Hayes (the screenwriting duo behind The Conjuring series), The Crucifixion follows the story of Nicole (Sophie Cookson), an American reporter traveling all the way to the Romanian countryside, investigating the sudden death of a nun during an exorcism.
In pursuit of a good explanation, she goes deep into the story by interviewing priests, but soon enough things take a sinister turn. This cliche-ridden tale features all the usual phenomena; unexplained eerie noises, ghostly faces, and moving objects - all leading to the inevitable and predictable climax. Does this sound familiar? If the plot feels like something you’ve watched before, it’s because you have.
For its swift duration, The Crucifixion feels rather long with its excessive back story being delivered in weak, routine jump-scares. In its entirety, Gens’ possession horror flick disappoints not because it’s that bad, but because it just doesn’t stand out from the crowd and evidently, can’t live up to its own hype. It could be that our expectations from the writers of The Conjuring were rather high and we were expecting they could drum up something original and exciting.
That’s not the case, though. And if we are okay with the fact that The Crucifixion will have an incredibly limited shelf life, you should be too.
Maria Kriva, HMS
The Horror Show Menu.