-Friedrich Nietzsche
The Order is a movie about a sect of the Catholic Church devoted almost entirely to the strange ancient rituals that the church would just as soon forget about (i.e. exorcism). This sect is trained to travel around the world and battle demons and the walking undead in all its forms. Think the Ghost Busters in cassocks.
Our story opens with a recently ex-communicated priest meeting up with something called a "sin eater." Dictionary.com defines sin eater as:
"An embodiment of sin; a very wicked person."
In the movie it apparently means a well-dressed, if slightly foppish, young man who enjoys jetting around the world sucking the sins out of people with a ritual using a sliver of the true cross, aramaic writing, bread and salt. And believe me, the weirdness doesn't stop there. The movie goes on to introduce us to an evil, would-be pope, a manic depressive who sees phantom birds and tries to kill priests, a drunken Irish priest who likes to chase demons down while brandishing a crucifix, and a bald headed she-male thing.
Apparently the sin eater is a person who can give somebody access to heaven without any sort of involvement from the church. Obviously the Catholics get all twisted up about this since they've pretty much had the market cornered on forgiveness and are pretty comfortable with deciding who gets past the velvet rope to heaven. The sin eater performs this nifty feat by taking the sins into himself. No explanation is given for God's reaction to uninvited guests showing up to his party in the sky. Also, the sin transfer process apparently makes the sin eater invincible.
The long and short of this movie is that the sin eater is getting tired and needs a replacement, so he sets up a scheme to find himself a replacement so he can go to the sin eater retirement home. He does this by making deals with a dark pope and an excommunicated priest. If that makes sense to you then you'll probably like this movie.
I had a really hard time following the story line. There were demons present in the movie, and a few of them got wacked only to show up later in the movie with no reason give for their renewed presence. At one point, one of the priests is lured into a chamber by a prostitute he had a cush on only to get nailed to the wall by spikes flying out of the woodwork. However, once the scene is over its never brought up again.
Like so many movies this story line could have been great but I think the writers just tried to do too much with it. It was entertaining at times, but confusing for the most part. Towards the end I was finding myself having to make great big assumptions in order to make the plot work in my mind. Which I guess would be a situation most Catholics are used to anyway, so maybe this movie just wasn't for me.