The Real Story Behind 10 "Based On A True Story" Horror Films
10. The Rite
The pitch: This 2011 film, in which Colin O'Donoghue's disillusioned seminary student is an apprentice exorcist to Anthony Hopkins, relied heavily in its marketing on the idea that it was based on real life observations of exorcisms from previously sceptical journalists and that its central characters were all based on actual individuals. Filled with fairly conventional exorcist movie tropes, it is really more a story about affirmation of faith and the power of belief than an effective horror. The real story: Writer Michael Petroni, a practicing Catholic whose previous work included spiritual themed material like Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the TV series Miracles, adapted his screenplay from the book The Making of a Modern Exorcist by journalist Matt Baglio. After the book was picked up before it was even finished by The Exorcism of Emily Rose producers Beau Flynn and Tripp Vinson, Petroni developed his film script alongside Baglio continuing to write the book. The film is actually pretty faithful to Baglio's book, which does concern an exorcism class much like the one depicted in the movie. There Baglio met Father Gary Thomas, an initially sceptical Californian parish priest who became essentially an apprentice to the experienced exorcist Father Carmine De Filippis. The characters played by O'Donoghue and Hopkins are named differently, but are fairly close versions of their real life counterparts. While the spiritual journey undergone by O'Donaghue's Michael Kovak seems fairly true to life, the exorcisms themselves are more dubiously truthful. Thomas was a consultant on the film and described its exorcisms as "very accurate" albeit taking some licenses. However, the memorable scenes in the film are not based on the exorcisms observed by Baglio or even Thomas, but on heresay and third hand reports recorded by Baglio (for example, the scene in which a possessed girl coughs up nails does appear in the book, but only as something another priest once told Thomas) or are completely imagined by Petroni (such as the child marked with hoof prints).
