After The Omen (1976), which was
released just two years after the sardonic U.S. President, Richard Nixon, had
resigned in utter disgrace from the presidency amid much economic and political
pessimism in the 1970s generally, moviemakers got busy on stories involving
demon-possession. The 2015 film, The Vatican Tapes, begins
as an apparent demon-possession case and thus seems not to stand out among
other such films, but towards the end of the film, when the demon-possessed
young woman suddenly breaches the bounds of the sort of supernatural feats of
which demons are capable, the true significance of her case emerges with
stunning clarity. For that which possesses and kills the young woman is none
other than the Anti-Christ, and that figure is in a wholly different league
than demons.
The full essay is at "The Vatican Tapes."
