Review of The Exorcist (1973) by Emily W — 25 Oct 2013

We all know the exhausted formula of the demonic possession/exorcism horror genre. There's a girl somewhere in her pre-teen or adolescent years who comes across a cursed object or a haunted house or some other crazy stuff, and she gets possessed, and the only sensical thing for parent A to do is to get help from a random spiritual person while parent B acts like a complete jerk because hey, they're divorced, and it's completely okay to demonize the parent who puts all the blame on another parent.

Or, it's about a non-believer who suddenly believes in Christ just because of a little exorcism. But despite this exhausted formula, The Exorcist manages to keep its shine. How? First let's look at the victim and the circumstances.

Sure, Regan is a girl in her late childhood or early teens, but she is a character we can relate to when we are introduced to her. And her descent into the possession is rather a shock. Also, while most current movies of the same genre introduce the possession via a cursed box or a cursed house, Regan gets possessed via Ouija Board which is how most real possession cases occur (if you believe in it).

Now, Regan only has her mother while her father is away in Europe. Thank goodness they did not make it another one of those cliché divorced parent relationships where one is a self-centered jerk and the other one is supposed to be the "cool" but lazy parent.

We know nothing about Regan's father other than he is in Europe and away all the time. Regan's mother also acts very responsibly and loving towards her child, which is what makes the possession escalation even harder to watch because we see how much Mrs.

MacNeil suffers throughout the process. Also, she reacts to the whole process like a sensible person would at first. She takes Regan to a doctor and keeps looking for a logical explanation until there is none left other than demonic possession.

Even when she does find out it is demonic possession, she is skeptical towards it until the last straw. Now, let's look at the priests. We mostly follow a priest named Father Karras who is rather young and is beginning to doubt his fate.

Now, in most movies of the same genre, the young, doubtful priest is the one who has no character what-so-ever, and is only in for it for God knows what reason. The point is, usually that character does not believe and by the end of the fiasco he believes.

Or he's dragged into it and he just decides to volunteer despite what little experience he has. Not this priest though. Damien is just a priest doing his usual work at the church and struggling to take care of his elderly mother.

He knows nothing about exorcism, but he helps out because the demon makes the situation into a personal dilemma. Also, it helps that one of his priest friends is a friend of the MacNeil family, so it is more personal in that sense.

That is one priest. The other priest does not have that much of a personality compared to the Father Karras. Father Merrin is the first we are introduced to. But all we know about him is that he travels around the world doing Archeology and writes books, as well as a few exorcisms here and there.

But that's all. He's just there to be the experienced hand next to Damien during the exorcism. Which brings me to another point. I do not feel that the opening was necessary. Sure, it is vaguely referenced sometime later in the movie, but if it were cut out of the final product then we would not miss anything.

Either that, or they could have explained it more. Now, let's get to the other stuff. First, the acting was good. Nothing was out of place or melodramatic or underacted. The effects were well used.

Especially for a 70's film. I'm still questioning how they got Regan's eyes to look how they did while she was possessed. I was guessing colored contacts, but I don't think they had colored contacts in the 70's.

I'd have to look that up. But seeing them use animatronics, lighting, and various other practical effects is a nice fresh breath from that annoying CGI that is overused. By the way, that demon face that just appear right the heck out of nowhere was creepy.

Especially when the lights flickered on and off and you could see his face just in the corner in black and white. God! Much better than having a random computer generated corpse hanging behind the person only to disappear when the person turned around.

One thing that I like about this movie is the use of casualties. There is a casualty when Regan is first possessed. A detective investigates only to realize by the end that some crazy shit went down. Father Merrin dies, possibly from whatever disease he had in the beginning while exorcising the demon.

And Damien sacrifices his life to rid Regan of the demon. This movie really thinks outside of the box, which is why this movie still has its shine after so many rip-offs have been made of it. It doesn't try to shove catholicism via exorcism in your face.

The characters make sense, and so do their interactions with other characters. The real scares are found in the progression of the possession and also in the performance. Seriously. That demon's voice makes it tough to distinguish it as a male or female.

I would rate this movie 5 stars out of 5.