If the prospect of screaming, possessed souls and Anthony Hopkins’ creepy gaze weren’t enough to give you nightmares, The Rite tries to trump up the fear factor by throwing some “facts” into the mix. The movie kicks off with an ominous quote from the late Pope John Paul II, who speaks about the legions of demons wandering the world. Then the onscreen titles tell you that the Roman Catholic Church is buffeting up its ranks of exorcists. In other words, what you are about to see could be real — if, that is, what followed weren’t so ludicrous.

Exorcism movies ultimately work with the same formula as the Nightmare on Elm Street series: you never know when the bad guy is going to pop up because the bad guy doesn’t obey the physical laws of nature. One minute you’re watching a plain-as-could-be young woman, the next minute she’s scratching the chair, wrenching her body into a contortionist’s routine, and screaming profanities in a gurgling voice. Watch out! She may give you the evil eye.

Despite the prospect of possession, strangulation, or demon-inspired suicide, there is little real threat in The Rite, and despite its factual protestations, the movie never captures The Exorcist’s nightmarish tone. The story follows Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue), the son of an undertaker who grew up among dead bodies. His father is gorishly severe. We see him in one scene kissing the hand of his dead wife, whom he is embalming, and inviting his son to come in and say prayers next to his mom’s corpse. Michael’s father has given his son an option: become an undertaker or join the priesthood. It’s a dilemma that might be believable if the movie was set in Ireland in the early 1900s, but in contemporary America, where the otherwise remarkably psychologically balanced Michael spends his evenings flirting with girls at a local bar, no one’s biting this conceit.

Nonetheless, Michael joins the seminary to get a free education, and when he tries to drop out at graduation, his spiritual director coaxes a few more months of discernment out of the young man by sending him to Rome to learn how to be an exorcist (presumably, we are told, because he has gotten good grades in his psychology classes and isn’t “squeamish” around dead people).

Rome in The Rite is a combination of a gaudy faux-baroque studio set that may have been left in the vaults of Cinecitta from a Giovanni Pastrone epic, and a creepy, vine-covered Umbrian hill town that we couldn’t believe for a second to be an actual forgotten corner of Rome. But it’s the Italian Gothic that counts, and in the creepy shadows, Michael meets Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins), an experienced exorcist. Let the head-spinning excitement begin!

The Rite is at its best when it glosses through some debates about the reality of God and the devil, and Michael confronts his church superiors with his sensible, if stubborn rationalism. The movie never leaves more than a few moments for these discussions, and I left wishing everyone would have found time to take in an evening bowl of pasta on a street-side table while discussing theological principles. That back-and-forth would have been interesting. Instead we have the game of suspicions.

Who raped the possessed girl? Who’s responsible for whose death? Who is really possessed? Will Michael spill the Church’s dark secrets to the attractive young journalist? Was Michael’s father possessed? Will Michael be taken over by the devil? Where the heck did that damn, glassy-eyed donkey come from? It’s enough to make you want to dose off in the theater with the hopes of encountering Freddy Krueger.