An off-the-radar Satanism thriller, director Joseph Tito's Death of the Virgin sort of falls between the pews, It's part occult-horror festooned with digital-camera tricks, ghostly entities, and shock cuts that have made the Conjuring and Insidious franchises popular, and part of the Catholic-infused gore-murder stuff associated with Italian blood maestros like Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava and Michele Soavi, only not quite as hypnotically stylish and fevered. Some parts, in fact, are downright draggy.
The setting is the (real life) Italian town of Caravaggio, famed for association with the hard-living Renaissance religious painter of the same name, and for an alleged apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1423. In the present day, a dance troupe stages an avant-garde piece inspired by the inchoate brush strokes of Caravaggio, especially his controversial painting "The Death of the Virgin." But the female principal dancer disappears.
More crimes and death seemingly inspired by Caravaggio imagery ensue. Entangled in the web of devilish mayhem are an international bunch of visitors lured by the shrine and the dance performance, staying at a creepy inn. Most pertinent of these to the (rather confused) storyline is May Williams (Natasha Allen), a winsome Canadian who has been studying to become a nun.
Her dark family background includes a mother who died in hellish mental-institution circumstances. Now May has visions of the neighborhood's sickening dismemberment slayings, interludes that invariably end with the terrified girl bolting upright in bed. This was-it-all-just-a-nightmare? bit gets repeated so much it soon becomes comical, though the finale offers a sort of explanation.
Violence includes decapitations, skull bashing, big hooks through faces, and tongue amputation, with the small mercy that much of this happens in murky and ill-lit circumstances. For hardened fright-film fanciers, some of Death of the Virgin works well, while other viewers might wonder what power of Lucifer makes 104 minutes feel like an eternity.
The sex-and-nudity quotient is on the low side, thank, uh, heavens. An optional purchase for the Halloween-minded set.