Very disappointing...

Sorry, this movie sucks

Great Film overall

Excellent but underrated film

a good story. good performances. interesting construction, using historical and religious pieces for a moral lesson about sin, judgment and prices of the life. and the impeccable building of a way to the truth of a young monk, with precise duty, discovering obscure details from a Church who seems be perfect, old secrets and old rules, the beautiful work of Heath Ledger are virtues of a f seductive film, remembering Da Vinci Code but being more profound as sender of a too precise universal message.

Suspense, mystery , shocks and grisly horror is this average terror film about occultism . It deals with a young reverend named Alex Bernier (Heath Ledger) is a member of an arcane order of priests known as Carolingians , he is sent to Rome to investigate the troubling death of the head of his order . The body bears strange marks on the chest which may or may not be the sign of a Sin Eater named William Eden (Vincent Cassel had originally been cast but left the production after three weeks due to "creative differences" , as he has been replaced by Benno Fürmann), a renegade who offers absolution, last rites ; therefore a path to heaven outside the jurisdiction of the church and unleashing fantastic powers . Alex enlists the aid of his old comrade named Father Thomas (Mark Addy) . Meantime ,the father is attempting to find out the bottom of events and he soon finds himself plunged into a mystery only to find himself at the heart of it. This is an average suspenseful and horrifying story , based on a screenplay by Brian Helgeland , also producer and filmmaker . The movie begins slowly and grows more and more until the twisted , creepy and eerie finale . Mediocre picture , thanks to passable acting , slow-moving pacing , middlingly mounted edition and skillful special effects . The film contains restless terror and usual poltergeists phenomenon . Passable acting by Heath Ledger as Alex , a priest sent to Rome to investigate mysterious circumstances surrounding a strange death and Sossamon as a troubled artist upon whom he once performed an exorcism . Enjoyable secondary cast as Mark Addy , Benno Furmann and special mention to Peter Weller , according to Brian Helgeland, did extensive research for his role by studying old religious rituals and histrionics. It is produced with little budget but well recreated with high grade special effects that are frightening and horrifying to spectator as when the sin eater carries out his abilities . It's actually halfway decent terror movie that failed at the box office and it will appeal to ghostly and eerie events fonds . Originally scheduled for January 17, 2002, the film's release date was postponed when the visual effects had to be redone because they were thought to be unintentionally funny , according to a anonymous source close to the production quoted by Variety magazine, the special effects depicting sins exiting the human body after death looked like "calamari".The picture packs a colorful as well as dark cinematography by Nicola Pecorini and eerie musical score by David Torn . The motion picture was regularly written , produced and directed by Brian Helgeland . Brian is a prestigious screenwriter , he won both his Oscar and a Razzie award the same weekend in 1998: He took Best Screenplay for L.A. Confidential (1997) and Worst Screenplay for Kevin Costner's The Postman (1997). He wrote the draft of the screenplay for Bourne supremacy (2004) but is not credited in the final film. His directing mentor was Richard Donner when they worked together on Conspiratión (1997) and then when Brain started to direct Payback (1999). He went on working on scripts of "Blood Work" and "Mystic River" for Clint Eastwood. An directed this ¨Sin eater¨ with Heath Ledger, Shannyn Sossamon, and Mark Addy all previously appeared together in ¨knight's tale¨. The motion picture will appeal to religious thriller buffs and dark atmosphere enthusiasts .

For years this movie was actually my favorite of all time, or at the very least tied with Bill Murray's "The Life Aquatic". This movie IS NOT A HORROR FILM. Get that ridiculous thought out of your heads people. In summation, it's a drama that brings characters to the brink of self-destruction in a Dogmatic Catholic universe (e.g. Vatican City). This is a pseudo-exorcism movie, insofar that there are exorcisms of a sort, but then you are made to think about the repercussions. The CGI is cheesy, but this is circa 2003, probably went in production in 2002. We didn't even have iPods back then, and the smartest phone you could get was a Blackberry, with a Palm Pilot to back it up. There are a couple of lines that seem forced, and I know for a fact that there is a part that I typically fast-forward through to get through the dialogue. All said, this is not an A movie, but definitely more deserving than the D rating most everyone is giving it.The people who rate this film low are the same ones responsible for the fact that we can EXPECT a new Transformers, Avengers, Twilight, etc. film year after year.

"The Sin Eater" is a extraordinary movie which will come to first time viewers as a hit-piece. Most certainly to people who have been raised with a religion, in particular the Catholic. The Sin Eater actually filled out a couple of important blanks for me. The central theme inside the movie is "There is no Salvation outside the Catholic Church of Rome". It means that people, who have been excommunicated, need to find a alternative method to find a eternal resting place for their soul. Enter the Sin Eater, who, with his special powers, delivers salvation at demand for the right price. The Sin Eater is like an extra "God" on earth and as such cannot die and lives an eternal life. There's one little problem though. Although people do get salvation, their sins are _not_ undone, but are actually saved up inside the Sin Eater's body and soul. After having done his job for over 500 years, the number and severity of sins have become to much, even for a Sin Eater. A replacement is due. Enter the last of the Carolinger Priests, who is carefully recruited throughout the movie, in a CIA secret service styled method. The Carolinger Priests inside the Sin Eater are presented as the Jedi of the Catholic priesthood, who do exorcisms and extermination of evil demons like candy cakes between lunch and supper. The old Sin Eater turns out have made a covert deal with a rotten black satanic Cardinal who wants to become the new pope. It is this rotten deal with the Cardinal which becomes one Sin to far for the Sin Eater as his Sin absorbing powers are decreasing rapidly. After the Sin Eater is replaced by the Carolinger Priest, who is not into black occult Satan worship, things turns very bad for the Cardinal as well. Although the above scenario reads like a nut-case novel to people with atheistic or pagan beliefs, the movie addresses the fight between the Christian religion and paganism in a straightforward fashion. E.g. the Satanic Cardinal retrieves all of his knowledge by hanging people and listening to their last words while dying. The Sin Eater contains some interesting scenes. For instance, when the Carolingian Chief Dominic is coming home for the last time, two orphan children are waiting for him at the door. Dominic suddenly knows his last hour on earth is very near. Such signs have been reported before to actually happen in real life.