“The Vatican Tapes,” or, “Haven’t We Done This Before?”

Yes, we know. When it comes to some of the sub-genres of horror movies — the slashers, the paranormal/supernatural, vampires, science gone awry — the stories are basically the same. The elements needed to make each film distinctive include motivations, characterizations, locales and any other plot twist that needs to be plausible.

The demonic possession / exorcism movie is at a disadvantage because it is weighted down by a simple structure. Some poor soul is invaded by a satanic force — and the motivation for this is obvious and not complex — and it needs to be purged.

Another problem is that 41 years ago, “The Exorcist” covered this with such brilliance and terror nothing that followed could even remotely approach this film’s standing as one of the scariest horror pictures of all time.

Filmmakers continue to delve into this subject, however.

Mark Neveldine, who directed the two Jason Statham “Crank” movies under the name Neveldine, has helmed “The Vatican Tapes,” a film whose title seems to imply this is the ultimate demonic possession exploration.

It isn’t.

Co-written by Chris Morgan and Christopher Borrelli, based on a story by Borrelli and Michael C. Martin, “The Vatican Tapes” is another pale “Exorcist” wannabe with some of “The Omen” mixed in.

Somewhere it must be written that in all demonic possession films, the victim must be a young girl or woman — this perhaps motivated by a notion that an innocent looking person can really be terrifying when under the influence of a malevolent entity.

In “The Vatican Tapes,” the target of the soul-consumption project is a woman named Angela Holmes (Olivia Taylor Dudley from “Chernobyl Diaries”). She is a patient at a Catholic mental hospital in the United States, and a video of one of her therapy sessions gains the concerned attention of Vicar Imani (Djimon Hounsou) in Vatican City. He shows the video to Cardinal Bruun (Peter Andersson), specifically focusing on one point on the stream in which there is the usual visual static and distortion that when freeze-framed shows some scary shadow image that looks pretty intimidating.

The movie flashes back five months to when Angela was a happy young woman, living with her boyfriend Pete (John Patrick Amedori) and dealing with her military father, Col. Roger Holmes (Dougray Scott, the villain Sean Ambrose in “Mission Impossible II), who naturally thinks Pete is not good enough for his daughter.

Angela’s 24th birthday party is marred when she badly slices her finger while cutting the cake. She reluctantly goes to a nearby Catholic  hospital with Pete and her father, where they have a brief encounter with the hospital chaplain, Father Lozano (Michael Peña). The wound is tended to and Angela is given some medication to take upon being sent home.

But she soon is drinking a lot of water, claiming a dry throat, and one day has a frightening encounter with a raven that bites her. Soon her behavior becomes erratic and leads to an accident that puts her into a coma. After several weeks in which Angela shows no brain activity, Roger agrees to take her off life support. She goes into full arrest but a moment later comes back to life.

However, now Angela is even more unpredictable, which leads to her being admitted to the mental hospital. By now Father Lozano has taken an interest in her case and begins to witness incidents that cannot be attributed to any mental disorder.

This brings us back where the movie opened, with Cardinal Bruun, sharing Vicar Imani’s concerns, deciding to go to the United States to perform the exorcism. By that time, Angela has caused so much commotion at the mental hospital that she is being released to the care of her father.

The effectiveness of “The Exorcist” was largely attributed to the young innocence of Regan, played by Linda Blair, and as she became horribly disfigured and growled and played mind games and spewed vile words and green vomit, it was horrifying to witness such a ghastly transition.

Weighing down “The Vatican Tapes” is the bland characterization of Angela. Little time is devoted to fleshing out Angela pre-possession, and as close as she is supposed to be to her father (she never knew her mother), that relationship is never believably realized.

Dudley as Angela does execute some creepy scenes well, using an ominous and menacing expression, and her whispered recitations, delivered in some unknown language that have a chaotic effect on others, do induce chills.

The exorcism scenes are superbly staged, with Cardinal Bruun’s confidence diminishing by the minute and Father Lozano realizing they are seriously outmatched.

“The Vatican Tapes” tries to be an overpowering possession movie, but there are no distinguishing moments. It all has been put on film before, with much more chilling punch.

The downfall of “Creep” is that it reveals too much

Recently added to the Netflix lineup, “Creep” is a two-man project, a small film that has dark humor along with cringe-inducing and unnerving moments.

Written by Mark Duplass (most recently seen in “The Lazarus Effect”) and Patrick Brice and directed by Brice, “Creep” also stars just these two men under a point-of-view format.

Brice plays Aaron, a videographer who answers an online ad for a one-day job at a cabin in Crestline, a mountain town northeast of Los Angeles.

Upon arriving, it seems like nobody is in the cabin, but then Josef (Duplass) suddenly appears. Once inside, Josef tells Aaron what his job will be. Josef says that he is married and his wife is expecting a baby boy in a few months. However, Josef says he has an inoperable and terminal brain tumor and likely will die either before or shortly after his son is born. So he wants Aaron to videotape him all day in an effort to present a record Josef can leave to his son to let the boy know who his father was.

It seems a simple enough, if sad, assignment, although Aaron stupidly expresses no curiosity as to why Josef’s wife is not around.

Soon things start to get a little uncomfortable. Immediately, Josef wants Aaron to videotape him while he takes a bath with an imaginary baby, playing a “rub-a-dub” game that Josef says his father did with him when he was young.

It gets worse. Josef is fond of disappearing and then leaping out to scare Aaron. Josef also has a wolf mask he has named Peach Fuzz. Josef’s behavior swings from being bizarre to genuinely reflective and sad. As the day progresses, Aaron becomes more leery of Josef, suspecting other motives — possibly even intimate overtones — that has the videographer eager to leave later in the evening. But his car keys have disappeared.

Some cat-and-mouse games ensue between the two men and eventually Aaron manages to get away. But soon he realizes that Josef is nowhere near being done with him.

A problem with “Creep” is that Aaron ends up being the typical easy prey, lacking any common sense, making him a ripe target for Josef’s manipulations.

On the plus side, Duplass is captivating as Josef, in a creepy way. His actions are unpredictable yet at times seem to be brilliantly calculated.

Unfortunately, “Creep” unravels in the final moments as it reveals too much. The Brice/Duplass team had a small gem here in keeping things murky. Had they followed that plan and maintained some element of mystery, “Creep” would have had a lasting effect of a psychological thriller wherein the lack of resolution leaves a residue of uneasiness.

More young people stumble into trouble in “The Gallows”

The found-footage/POV sub-genre of horror films, like the teen slasher movies of the 1970s-80s, will not fade away quietly. The “Paranormal Activity” franchise, which has sustained the strongest run in this structure of scary movies, has at least one more round to go. And while the found-footage/POV type of coverage has been used to explore spooky wooded areas (“The Blair Witch Project”), the crumbling of security in homes of middle-class families (“Paranormal Activity” series) and even witnessing the destruction of New York (“Cloverfield”), there seem to be other places it can crop up.

For its nerve-wracking story, “The Gallows” takes place in a venue that for some people was horrifying in real life — high school.

Co-written and co-directed by Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing, “The Gallows” also revisits a site that has been used before to spark jitters — an empty theater auditorium.

In 1993, a prop malfunction during a small-town high school’s stage production of a play titled “The Gallows” results in the tragic death of a student, Charlie, playing one of the lead roles. Now two decades later, as part of a tribute to the boy, the high school is about to stage that same play again.

The first 30 minutes of the movie are devoted to introducing and developing the main characters. Naturally the key person needs to be the one who constantly has to visually record everything, and fulfilling that role is Reese (Reese Mishler), by far the most obnoxious videographer ever depicted in this type of movie. His school work seems to be secondary to his obsessive need to have a his camera recording everything. He disrespects the drama department’s efforts at putting on the play, and he bullies the nerdy Stage Boy (Price T. Morgan).

Reese particularly channels his disdain toward Ryan (Ryan Shoos), picked to play the lead role that the doomed Charlie took on in 1993. Ryan has quit the football team to devote his energies toward “The Gallows,” but in rehearsals he is atrocious. Reese suspects that Ryan is only participating in the play to win the affections of Pfeifer (Pfeifer Brown), the student playing the lead female role and the person who has been the driving force behind getting this play on stage.

Also on the periphery of all this is Reese’s gilrfriend Cassidy (Cassidy Gifford), one of the cheerleaders.

When Reese discovers that one of the back doors to the theater building is broken and cannot be locked, he hatches a plan he sees as a way of preventing Ryan from humiliating himself in the play. Reese proposes that they break into the theater later that night and destroy the props on the stage, thus forcing the play to be cancelled. He manages to talk the reluctant Ryan into going through with this by suggesting that Ryan could then comfort a distressed Pfeifer when she learns the play has been grounded.

The Cluff/Lofing writing team deserves kudos for coming up with this premise. It provides a plausible reason for these young people to sneak into the theater other than nonsensical mischief.

When the students finally arrive at the school at night, the tension level ratchets up. What makes or breaks movies of this type is how effectively the scary moments are delivered, along with the revelation of what is behind all of this terror.

Unfortunately, “The Gallows” at this point could be any other found-footage movie with its almost nausea-inducing shaky camera work that adds nothing new when it comes to the frightening moments. The standards are there: doors slamming and now locked, mysterious sounds of footsteps, shadows lurking, items suddenly disappearing, and dark, creepy rooms filled with clutter that produce scream-inducing imagery.

Much like “The Blair Witch Project,” the filmmakers present an ending that leaves the audience guessing as to what is really going on. This is a plus for “The Gallows” after the usual tiresome exercise of young people running around finding there is no escape.

“The Gallows” employs the gimmick of using the actors’ real names as their character names. This was done initially in “The Blair Witch Project’ as the marketing strategy of pretending Heather (Donohue), Josh (Leonard) and Michael (Williams) were not actors but real people who actually disappeared. Now, 16 years later, this is a device that is laughable.

Aside from the irritating behavior of Reese, so grating you might actually root for his demise, the rest of the characters, especially the young ladies, are barely memorable. This movie desperately needs some quiet moments like the dialogue of the three characters in “Blair Witch Project” that made viewers, if not totally liking them, at least identifying with them in certain situations.