Why didn't they just??????

[deleted]

You are taking this very literal for a bunch of SWAT members that had no actual clue to why they were actually there. Were you even paying attention whilst watching the film?

1. I don't think they wanted a big operation.

The whole point was to keep this a secret. Letting 4 SWAT guys babble afterwards about how they saw "demons" and "zombies" in the building would have kept everything nice and tidy since no one would have ever believed them (which the priest clearly says is the strategy) except for the most ardent conspiracy theorists out there.

However, having 15 SWAT guys saying the same thing might start getting a bit too real and difficult to pass off as a silly conspiracy theory by some guys looking for their 15 minutes of fame.

2. My theory on why only 1 Vatican guy was there is that this whole thing was pretty hush-hush within the Vatican itself. It sounded to me like this whole operation was confined to just a few select people, one of which was dead in the attic.

I agree with the original comment.

It's one thing to send in a small force for secrecy's sake when they don't know what they're dealing with.

After they had a better sense, they should have pulled out, re-grouped and weighed out the options: send in a force that would be adequate to deal with the magnitude of the threat or, for secrecy's sake, send in a small force again with a 50% chance of success. If the second plan failed, there would be even more zombies and the building would have to stay under quarantine until they decide to take more decisive action. How long could they keep that up without something being revealed anyway? Either way, keeping things secret just didn't seem worth the risk - better to being maximum force to end the threat.

The priest was in charge because someone higher up with more authority made that happen. That means they knew what was at stake, and made an irresponsible decision to put someone in charge who would not be able to assess the situation if things got out of hand. If anything, they should have had a SWAT team leader prepped by the priest, and leading the military aspect, while the priest could advise on the objectives. The SWAT leader would at least know what they were dealing with and could make better tactical assessments.

If people in movies acted rationally I suppose most movies would be much shorter - I know this one would have been.

Conflict of interests was most likely the reason why things were out of control. The Vatican was aware of the possessed girl as they were the ones conducting the experiments, but the government knew almost nothing about it: to them it was an outburst of infection, hence all the precautions and quarantined zone.

At the same time, the Vatican played their own scheme and most likely misinformed select few officials on purpose in order to let that priest enter the building. Imagine if the Vatican called the Spanish Prime Minister and told him that he has to take urgent measures as there is a daemonic outbreak in one of Barcelona's block of flats... Now I doubt very seriously that any top politician would risk his career and listen to such nonsense. The Vatican misinformed the Spanish state (there are many ways to do this when you have excellent connections in politics) and organised the whole quarantine. However, you can be sure that none of the police, military or scientific teams knew what exactly was the cause of the outbreak. They just knew there was a violent virus on the loose and the whole place had to be locked down.

The same goes for not giving authority to the special forces' commander. As the Vatican was in control, their interests were at stake: by giving control to the special forces, they would risk either losing what they came for or creating even more problems as the commander would undoubtedly have given orders to evacuate the wounded ones who would in turn bite more people and spread the infection outside. Also, sending in more troops into the building would have been risky as all of them would have weapons and other kind of sophisticated equipment which means they could possibly find a way to escape the quarantine - what if some of them had been infected? Moreover, there was no time to "brief" the special forces (how the hell do you expect police or army to believe in daemons and act accordingly when for most this would be the rantings of a madman?) when they were inside and the Vatican could not do it before either out of fear of mass hysteria (a lot of people are still religious) and at the same time - ignorance (how many do you know who would believe you if you told them daemons were real and were in the process of slaughtering people across the street?).

In my opinion, the Vatican acted immorally by conducting the experiments in the first place, but they did it "right" by giving the authority to the priest only. Imagine if they did find the cure, then proved to the masses that daemons were very real, and only the Vatican could save the entire world from an early apocalypse. Oh, the number of Catholics would surge into several billions and propel the Vatican to the level of power not seen even in the Middle Ages. I guess this was the main logic behind all of this.

Again, it is very hard to judge whether the police or army would have acted any better than the priest, because we, humans, did not have contact with supernatural forces, especially evil ones; at least we have no proof of it yet. We are all used to seeing super heroes in films who stay calm in any situation and can always make correct decisions under any pressure, but the reality is very different. No amount of training can prepare you for the unexpected - something you cannot believe or even imagine exists - and once it does happen, you are bound to make mistakes.