Early Reviews of "The Rite"

And it sounds like it's well worth a look.  Steven Greydanus reviewed it in Christianity Today.  Excerpts follow:

...This is not a world in which demons manifest openly or in which sacred objects like crosses or holy water are omnipotent over the forces of darkness. Exorcism in The Rite is a long, drawn-out process that can last for weeks, months or even longer. In that way, among others, The Rite is probably the most sober, realistic treatment of exorcism in Hollywood history. It's also a pretty thoughtful depiction of doubt and faith—one of a tiny number of exorcism films, along with the original Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, that offers a spiritual, even theological take on what most films in the genre treat as mere horror-movie trappings...

Although The Rite stumbles when it lapses into standard horror tropes, Hopkins' easy authority and sense of calm urgency go a long way toward making the realistic exorcism scenes credible, and he negotiates both the better lines and the sillier ones with aplomb. (He's much better here than he was sleepwalking through last year's late-winter horror turkey, The Wolfman.) O'Donoghue, an active Catholic and a TV and stage veteran making his big-screen debut, ably conveys Michael's intelligence and uneasy sense of suspension between belief and unbelief, and Alice Braga is effective as a sympathetic journalist who generates some tension with the seminarian without either of them crossing any lines they shouldn't...

Catholic imagery abounds: crucifixes, images of St. Therese of Lisieux and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and so on. All in all, it's the most positive depiction of the Church and of Christian faith I can think of in any recent Hollywood film. Hostile critics may even dismiss it as religious propaganda, but it deserves more credit than that...

The film is loosely inspired by journalist Matt Baglio's nonfiction book The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, which documents the training of a real-life exorcist, Fr. Gary Thomas of San Jose, California, who went to Rome in 2005 to apprentice with an experienced exorcist. If there's one aspect of Fr. Gary's experiences, or the experiences of any good exorcist, that I wish had gotten justice in the film, it's the reality that psychological problems rather than demonic influences are at the root of most troubled people's problems...

And, of course, the trailer: