The release of a new exorcism movie has become a rather mundane ritual, but the latest, unimaginatively named The Ritual, follows in the footsteps of recent Russell Crowe vehicles The Pope’s Exorcist and The Exorcism by luring an unlikely older star to the project. Playing the “poor soul”, Father Theophilus, assigned the task of performing an exorcism on the stricken Emma (Abigail Cowen) is none other than gangster extraordinaire: Al Pacino. Reluctantly at his side is horror’s recurrent weirdo Dan Stevens as Father Joseph in his most straight laced genre role yet.

Beginning like any fake-real film with the statement that the following scenes are based on true events, The Ritual follows the most documented exorcism in American history: that of Emma Schmidt, 46 at the time of the alleged possession, in 1928. Even as The Ritual declares its authenticity it tries to blur the lines of fact and fiction, mainly done with handheld shaky camera work that attempts to create the feel of a documentary but ends up feeling more like The Office than Ghostwatch. The use of the crash-zoom is so relentless that had the camera technique managed to gain autonomy, it might have filed a cease and desist against all involved.

The umpteenth horror film in the last decade to be named The Ritual, David Midell’s film claws at realism as desperately as the demon scratches at its vessel, however one gnawingly distracting factor is the amount of nipped, tucked and filled faces among the cloister. Evil may have fallen over Father Joseph’s convent but the Holy Spirit has blessed all inside with surgical precision and poreless skin. And no matter how often the flock comment on how dangerously dehydrated Emma is – appearing here in her early 20s – even as her condition worsens, her skin remains incredibly dewy.

The fountain (or knife) of youth thankfully has refrained from touching Al Pacino, who appears as the scruffy granddaddy of exorcisms, complete with hair that sticks up like he’s just been electrocuted in an episode of Looney Tunes. He is here to dole out wisdom and to ground Father Joseph, whose wavering faith makes him a detriment to the cause. But an astoundingly inconsistent script breaks any trust audiences may have in Theophilus, especially when he insists that the priests and nuns involved must hold their resolve on the final eve of exorcism and “not let up” – only for everyone to inexplicably leave the possessed girl at the same time, presumably for a coffee break.

All of which would have been excusable if Midell had directed an exorcist film more akin to The Pope’s Exorcist, where Russell Crowe jauntily zips out from the Vatican on a bright red Vespa, rather than what is clearly intended as a sincere dramatisation of a real exorcism. With its insistence on truth even as it strays from the historical accounts it hinges on, The Ritual fails to scare, entertain or convert. Even though the seasoned professionals attached manage to hold their own, Pacino and Stevens can’t save The Ritual from itself.

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When Marce­lo (Wag­n­er Moura) first arrives in Dona Sebastiana’s build­ing, he is greet­ed by a curi­ous cat whose head is split into two ful­ly formed faces, each fac­ing an oppo­site direc­tion. In a way, Brazil is much like that cat, con­stant­ly look­ing at two real­i­ties at once: the past that has shaped it, and the future it resilient­ly stum­bles towards.

Kle­ber Men­donça Filho’s The Secret Agent first finds Wag­n­er Moura’s char­ac­ter arriv­ing back in his home­land of Recife after a stretch in São Paulo. Dri­ving a bright yel­low VW Bee­tle, the man’s first glimpse of his home state is an omi­nous one: a body stretched in front of a petrol sta­tion, blood and oil seep­ing into the arid grounds of the North­east. It is a sign of what is to come, a gnarly omen in gnarly times when vio­lence is not only com­mon but sanc­tioned. It is 1977, and Brazil has just crossed the halfway mark of a dic­ta­tor­ship that would last anoth­er eight years but come to define much of the country’s iden­ti­ty for the decades that come.

The Secret Agent arrives two years after Filho’s Pic­tures of Ghosts, an inti­mate film about the movie palaces of his beloved Recife. That project would take sev­en years, some of them shared with the writ­ing of his lat­est. This inter­sec­tion is ever felt, the two works seep­ing into one anoth­er, coex­ist­ing in a land of mem­o­ry where one is made time machine, the oth­er a paracosm.

Alexan­dre, the pro­jec­tion­ist of Recife’s Cin­e­ma São Luiz and a promi­nent fig­ure in Pic­tures of Ghosts, returns here as part fic­tion, part truth. Played by Car­los Fran­cis­co with the same lop­sided limp and open ter­ra­cot­ta shirt, the fic­tion­al Alexan­dre is Marcelo’s father-in-law and, most impor­tant­ly, grand­fa­ther to his young boy, Fer­nan­do. The man is the gate­way to bring­ing Filho’s beloved cin­e­ma to the thriller, a movie palace whose labyrinthine cor­ri­dors and small hid­den rooms prove the per­fect loca­tion for Marcelo’s secret testimonies.

The rea­son for those tes­ti­monies, giv­en by the elu­sive man to the even more elu­sive Elza (Maria Fer­nan­da Cân­di­do), is at the heart of this polit­i­cal thriller that drinks from the foun­tain of the clas­sic Amer­i­can genre and fierce­ly spits back its Brazil­ian coun­ter­part. Like Bacu­rau, the film is shot in anamor­phic Panav­i­sion, and just like Bacu­rau, it har­ness­es the speci­fici­ties — and his­to­ry — of the for­mat to pay homage to the great clas­sics Fil­ho per­haps once watched at the same screens Marce­lo peeks at through the pro­jec­tion booth win­dow where sweat drips onto celluloid.

Filho’s cinephil­ia is stitched through The Secret Agent both dieget­i­cal­ly and non-dieget­i­cal­ly. It is present in the world of the film through Fernando’s draw­ings of Steven Spielberg’s night­mare-induc­ing poster for Jaws and the São Luiz, where Richard Donner’s The Omen sends cus­tomers run­ning out in pan­ic attacks and John Guillermin’s King Kong is teased on the mar­quee. But it is also heav­i­ly present in the film’s con­struc­tion, with Evge­nia Alexandrova’s stun­ning cin­e­matog­ra­phy — mark­ing Filho’s first fic­tion fea­ture with­out fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Pedro Sotero — gnaw­ing at the wide frame of Panav­i­sion to evoke a Bri­an de Pal­ma-esque ten­sion and play­ing with depth to ampli­fy a sense of foreboding.

In this, The Secret Agent is also self-ref­er­en­tial, not only in its umbil­i­cal con­nec­tion to Pic­tures of Ghosts, but in how Fil­ho revis­its cen­tral themes and aes­thet­ic prod­dings of his pre­vi­ous work to con­struct his bois­ter­ous thriller. You have the feel­ing of com­mu­ni­ty and cama­raderie of Neigh­bor­ing Sounds, with Sebastiana’s refugee com­mune prov­ing a bustling micro­cos­mos of shared loves, joys, and grief; much like Aquar­ius, this is a film def­er­en­tial to the pre­cious­ness of belong­ing, of root­ing one­self in a home that goes beyond the prover­bial; and the riotous vio­lence and punk of Bacu­rau is here once more, with the direc­tor chop­ping at limbs and skin and bone alike, explod­ing and tear­ing and cut­ting with deli­cious mercilessness.

The film­mak­er reen­lists some key repeat cre­ative part­ners to realise this ambi­tious recre­ation of 1970s Recife. Pro­duc­tion design­er Thales Jun­queira makes cocoons out of safe homes, lin­ing shelves with pre­cious sou­venirs and knick-knacks, each in itself a por­tal to anoth­er world, anoth­er time. Bureau­crat­ic offices become escape rooms, over­stuffed and aus­tere, the click-clack­ing of type­writ­ers merg­ing into an eerie count­down. Cos­tume design­er Rita Azeve­do fash­ions Moura after the Brazil­ian flag, with yel­low graph­ic tees, blue polos, and green shirts com­pos­ing a wardrobe that feels more con­fronta­tion­al than patriotic.

But The Secret Agent is, of course, a film of its own, and fea­si­bly Filho’s most refined, out­right auteurist work yet. Moura anchors this tale of his­to­ry as an after­life with a ter­rif­ic encap­su­la­tion of the kind of hope­less­ness that masks itself as resilience, his gaze infused with the aching long­ing of a future con­demned to remain pos­si­bil­i­ty. The large ensem­ble cast, plur­al and charm­ing and ever-inter­est­ing to look at and lis­ten to, crowns a film that grabs at the fab­ric of a peo­ple with the con­fi­dent, hun­gry hands of those who love it.

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