Unquiet
Things

Michele Soavi’s The Church is a mess of medieval massacres and modern-day demonic possession, built on a premise that sounds far more compelling than its actual execution. The film opens with Teutonic Knights brutally slaughtering an entire village accused of devil worship, burying their bodies in a mass grave and constructing a massive cathedral directly over their corpses,  a not-so-subtle metaphor about the Church’s historical violence and attempts to cover up its sins.

Enter Evan, the librarian who is late to work on his first day and immediately demonstrates he has no business being in this extraordinary job. When a woman is restoring a wild, Bosch-like fresco, he asks about her work, and her blasé “meh, it’s whatever” shrug in response, perfectly encapsulates how little these characters appreciate their uniquely weird positions. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking at old books,” Evan whines, which is hilarious coming from a medieval church librarian. Sir, what exactly did you think this job would entail?

The film traps a wonderfully absurd collection of visitors inside the church when demonic possession takes hold: a school group on an outing, two motorcyclists heading to a concert, a bridal magazine photo shoot, and a collection of random tourists. Among them, one particular elderly woman emerges as the film’s most delirious highlight. She chirps to her husband Heinrich about “groovy biscuits” and drags him up some obscure stairs with a gleeful “I have a FAB idea!” Somehow, Heinrich loses his head (how exactly? The film never quite explains), and suddenly she’s enthusiastically bonging the church bell using his decapitated head.

Meanwhile, baby-faced Asia Argento, who looks about 10 but is sneaking out to clubs and hanging with older boys, adds another layer of weirdness to this already bizarre narrative. As the church’s self-defense mechanism activates, the film becomes a psychedelic hallucination of Italian horror, with the Goblin score and wild visual setpieces barely holding together a narrative that feels like a nightmare projected through a kaleidoscope of blood and baroque architecture. It’s the kind of Italian horror that’s infinitely more interesting to discuss than to actually watch, with its convoluted plot about an ancient evil waiting to be unleashed, jumbled references to historical trauma, and absolutely zero logic.

I found The Church on Tubi.

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