When reporter Nicole Rawlins (Sophie Cookson) learns that a nun died during an apparent exorcism in a small town in Romania, she approaches her editor, Phil (Jeff Rawle), about covering the story. She travels to the town, hoping to get an interview with the priest who has now been accused of murder. After getting settled in, she meets Father Anton (Corneliu Ulici), a local holy man who gives her information about the area and his take on what happened with the nun. Nicole questions the locals and visits the church where the death occurred. As she continues her investigation, the mystery deepens and Nicole can’t help but wonder if something supernatural is happening.

In fact, the movie doesn’t seem to know what it’s about. The only thing which is given any real depth is Nicole’s backstory, which explores why she lost her faith. (We get a similar character in The Reaping.) Other than that, it just meanders from one idea to another and is truly never interesting. The story is pedestrian to a fault. When makes the direction which Gens takes with the material even more odd. I guess in the intervening years since his last movie, Gens decided that he wanted to get back to the graphic material which first got him noticed. So, we get some quasi-disturbing shots scattered throughout the movie. A movie, I should mention, seems to forget that it’s a horror movie for the first act, as the jump scares suddenly arrive in the middle of the movie. I must say that a few of these are actually effective, but, like the gross-stuff, they seem out of place.

The horror movie genre has several sub-genres, one of which was essentially invented in 1973 with The Exorcist. And now any movie which features possession has to offer an elaborate exorcism scene. So, of course, The Crucifixion must have one and it's not very impressive (and it felt a lot like a similar scene in The Conjuring.) Of all of the frustrating things in this movie, number one may be the fact that it claims to be based on true events, but we are given no indication of what those may be. The Crucifixion is yet another modern horror movie which is well-acted, has some nice effects, but ultimately goes nowhere. If anything, it should have been a documentary on how lucky Nicole was to find every English-speaking person in Romania.

The Crucifixion made me wonder what kind of car Nicole had rented on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Lionsgate. The film has been letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 33 Mbps. The image is sharp and clear, showing no overt grain and no defects from the source materials. The colors look good, and the image is never overly dark. The landscape shots show an impressive amount of depth, while we also get a good amount of detail. The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 4.0 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. The jump scare are punctuated by very effective subwoofer effects. These moments are typically proceeded by dreamlike sequences in which we get a nice smattering of surround and stereo effects that bring us some moderately detailed sounds.

The Crucifixion Blu-ray Disc is quite short on extra features. "The Crucifixion: The Director's Vision" (7 minutes) is an interview with Gens which really should have been subtitled. He talks about how he got involved with the project and his approach to the material. The only other extra is a TRAILER for the film.