Most people remember the blood. When Mel Gibson released The Passion of the Christ back in 2004, the conversation was almost entirely about the "R" rating and the sheer, unrelenting violence of the crucifixion. But if you watch it again today, the thing that actually gets under your skin isn't the scourging. It’s that pale, androgenous figure drifting through the crowd. The devil in The Passion of the Christ is easily one of the most unsettling depictions of evil ever put on film, and honestly, it’s because Mel Gibson and actress Rosalinda Celentano decided to throw the "red suit and horns" playbook out the window.
It’s weird. It’s haunting. It’s basically a masterclass in how to use visual subversion to create dread without saying a single word.
Who Exactly Was the Devil in The Passion of the Christ?
Let’s talk about Rosalinda Celentano. To get that look, she went through a pretty intense transformation. Gibson wanted a character that was neither male nor female, a "grey" entity that felt like a corruption of humanity rather than a monster from a storybook. They shaved her eyebrows. They bleached her skin until it looked like parchment. Then, they dubbed her voice with a man’s voice in post-production to create this jarring, dissonant effect whenever she actually opened her mouth.
You’ve probably noticed she doesn’t do much. She’s just there.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, she’s slithering through the brush. During the trial, she’s pacing behind the Roman soldiers. This was a deliberate choice by Gibson to show that evil isn't always the one swinging the hammer; sometimes, it's just the one watching with a smug, bored expression while humans do the dirty work for it. It makes the devil in The Passion of the Christ feel more like a parasite than a conqueror.
That Creepy Baby Scene Explained
If there is one scene people still argue about at dinner parties, it’s the one where the Devil carries a "baby" during the scourging of Jesus. It is, frankly, gross. You see this adult-looking, hairy-backed infant turning around to smirk at the camera while Jesus is being whipped to a pulp.
Gibson has actually spoken about this in interviews. The idea was to create a "perversion of the Madonna and Child." If the Virgin Mary represents the ultimate purity and the beginning of life, this creature represents the ultimate corruption and the stagnation of life. It’s a visual insult. It’s the Devil mocking Mary by saying, "Look, I have a child too, but mine is a nightmare."
📖 Related: Why American Beauty by the Grateful Dead is Still the Gold Standard of Americana
People often ask if that baby was a real person or CGI. It was actually an actor with dwarfism, Davide Marotta, who was aged further with prosthetics to look like a cynical, ancient man trapped in a child’s body. It’s a scene that doesn't need dialogue to explain why it’s horrifying. You just feel it in your gut.
The Theology of Silence
Most movies treat Satan like a villain in a Marvel movie. He has a plan, he has a monologue, and he usually has a giant CGI fight at the end. But the devil in The Passion of the Christ operates on a totally different level of theology.
- Presence over Power: The character never physically attacks Jesus. The temptation happens in the mind and the spirit. By just being a witness, the Devil acts as a physical manifestation of the world's indifference and cruelty.
- The Genderless Void: By choosing an actress with striking, masculine features and then layering in a male voice, Gibson tapped into the idea that evil is a privation of the "natural order." It's not a "him" or a "her"—it's an it.
- The Final Scream: The only time the character truly loses their cool is at the very end. When Jesus dies, we see a wide shot of a desolate, rocky landscape—meant to be the ruins of Hell or a spiritual desert—and the Devil lets out a bone-chilling scream of defeat.
It’s one of the few moments where the mask slips. Up until then, the Devil thought they were winning. By killing the "Son of God," Satan assumed the light would go out. Instead, the death becomes the victory. That scream is the realization that they’ve played right into the hand of a larger plan.
Visual Cues You Might Have Missed
The cinematography by Caleb Deschanel is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Notice how the Devil is often framed in the background, slightly out of focus? It makes you feel like you’re being watched, too. There’s also the snake. In the opening scene in Gethsemane, a snake slithers out from under the Devil’s robes toward Jesus.
This is a direct reference to Genesis—the "crushing of the serpent’s head." When Jesus finally stands up and stomps on the snake, it’s the first real beat of the movie that signals where the story is going. It’s subtle, but it sets the stakes.
Why Rosalinda Celentano Almost Didn't Take the Role
Interestingly, Celentano wasn't exactly a devout follower looking to do a religious epic. She’s an Italian actress known for being a bit of a rebel. Gibson reportedly chose her because of her eyes. He said they had a "look of knowing" that felt ancient.
👉 See also: Why October London Make Me Wanna Is the Soul Revival We Actually Needed
To prepare, she basically had to become a statue. She had to learn how to not blink for long periods, which added to that "uncanny valley" feeling. If you look at her eyes during the scene where she’s walking through the crowd during the carrying of the cross, they are unnaturally blue and piercing. It doesn't look like a human looking at a man; it looks like a predator looking at a wounded animal.
Breaking Down the "Androgyny" Controversy
At the time, some critics were annoyed. They felt that making the Devil androgynous was some kind of commentary on gender. Honestly, though? In the context of the film, it seems more about "otherness."
If you look at the history of Christian art, demons were rarely just "guys with pitchforks." They were chimeras. They were mixtures of animals, humans, and things that shouldn't exist together. Gibson was going back to that medieval root. By making the devil in The Passion of the Christ look "off," he made the character more terrifying than any monster suit ever could.
The character is a void. A vacuum.
Comparison to Other Cinematic Devils
Compare this to Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate or Elizabeth Hurley in Bedazzled. Those characters are all about charm and personality. They want to talk you into a deal.
The Devil in Gibson's world isn't interested in a deal. They are interested in despair.
✨ Don't miss: How to Watch The Wolf and the Lion Without Getting Lost in the Wild
- Pacino: Loud, boisterous, legalistic.
- Viggo Mortensen (The Prophecy): Primal, cannibalistic, creepy.
- Celentano: Quiet, observational, mocking.
The quietness is what stays with you. You realize that while everyone else is screaming and crying, the Devil is the only one who is perfectly calm. That calm is the scariest part of the whole movie.
Impact on Horror and Religious Cinema
Whether you like the movie or not—and it’s still one of the most polarizing films ever made—you can’t deny that it changed how "spiritual evil" looks on screen. Before 2004, religious movies were often very "Sunday School." They were bright, clean, and safe.
The Passion of the Christ brought a grit and a "horror-movie" aesthetic to the Bible. It treated the spiritual battle as something visceral. The success of the film (it made over $600 million on a tiny budget) proved that audiences actually liked the dark, uncomfortable edges of these stories.
We see the DNA of this character in modern folk-horror. The pale, staring figures in movies like Hereditary or The Witch owe a bit of a debt to the visual language Gibson established here. It's the "horror of the periphery." The thing in the corner of your eye that shouldn't be there.
Actionable Takeaways for Film Buffs and Students
If you’re analyzing the film or just want to understand the craft behind it, here is what you should look for on your next watch:
- Watch the eyes: Notice how Celentano rarely blinks. This was a physical choice to remove human empathy from the character.
- Listen to the "Ambient" sound: The Devil is often accompanied by a low-frequency hum or a change in the wind. It’s a subtle audio cue that the "unnatural" has entered the frame.
- Analyze the framing: Count how many times the Devil is placed in the exact center of a shot compared to the edges. Usually, the Devil is on the periphery, suggesting that evil works through the shadows of society.
- Research the sources: Look into the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich. Much of the imagery in the film, including the more surreal elements of the Devil, comes from her 19th-century writings rather than the four Gospels.
The devil in The Passion of the Christ remains a landmark in character design because it refuses to be simple. It’s a mirror. It shows the characters—and the audience—the darkest parts of human nature, reflected back in a cold, pale face that offers no mercy and no explanation. It's a performance that doesn't need a sequel or a backstory to be effective; it just needs to exist in the background, watching.