The team behind A Knight’s Tale reunite (could you wait?) for this supernatural ‘thriller’ which casts Aussie heart-throb Heath Ledger as an idealistic young priest (yeah, right) who belongs to the arcane, mystical order of the Caroligians. When his former mentor dies, he finds himself in Rome on the trail of a sin eater – one of those medieval blokes who can absolve the unrepentant dead from their sins. The fact that said sin eater has a goatee beard, a Rembrandt collection, a private jet and has been on the job for four hundred years doesn’t seem to strike Ledger as being remotely sinister. Nor does the clearly connected subplot about a black pope and an anti-church.
Apart from making him the dimmest man in movies this summer (discounting the cast, and indeed the creator, of Dumb And Dumberer), this creates one of many logic lapses in The Sin Eater. Much of the movie blunders about from one thing to another in a manner that suggests that a blind monkey got into the editing suite, and just to balance things out, other plot points are laboured and spelled out until you want to run out on the street screaming “Stop! Enough! I get it!”
The film does score points for atmospherics though. There are libraries stacked with creepy, heretical manuscripts, graveyards filled with indecipherable whispers and weird Village Of The Damned – alike kids. The lighting scheme draws from a palate that makes The X-Files look like Neighbours, veering from pitch-black to dark hues. Hell, Ledger’s brooding demeanour and Sossamon’s odd elfin features (replete with Kahlo-esque unibrow) could probably sustain a bone-chilling flick all on their own.
Trouble is, all those things are wasted here. The Sin Eater should be enjoyable gothic hokum, a murky metaphysical movie in the same mould as The Exorcist. Instead, it’s one of the most boring films of the year. Even Ledger and Sossamon (as his not-too-secret love interest) disappoint – I’ve met electric toothbrushes before that vary their intonation more than they do here. However, with realms of dialogue like “Sometimes you look into the abyss, and sometimes the abyss looks back into you”, no-one can hold their performances against them.
If more proof were needed of the inherent worthlessness of this entire affair, then check out the movie’s evil transvestite altar-boys – a visual device strictly for those who suspect that Shirley Temple-Bar’s primary function is to topple Holy Ireland. Such moments of unintentional comedy hardly make this essential viewing, but they’re the best thing The Sin Eater has going for it. Befuddled.