One day you are planning a date with your eleven year old daughter about what you are going to do for her birthday and the next day you are planning on who to go to try to figure out why your little girl is no longer their, not because she is missing but because there is more than just a little girl behind that "devilish" smile. (The Exorcist), there is a lot of good publicity surrounding this film, and by good I mean people talking about how it is an evil film and how the film is not a thing that should be watching by anyone with any sort of faith. All of which leads to pretext that this is one scary horror movie.
Chris McNeal an actress who is at the peak of career is raising her daughter by herself. She has a lot of time for her daughter, her friends, her career but none for faith, as she is an atheist and has taught her daughter nothing that has to do with religion. She is happy living a good life with her daughter and making films until there is an intruder, someone that came to plague the innocence. It ravages this family to the bone as they try to expel the evil from their home. All while this taking place there is a young priest who is faced with a trail, a crisis of faith.
This was my favorite horror film for the longest time, it is only passed by (Alien) in my book. From the start of this film you are know that something is wrong going on as Max Von Sydow's character becomes frighten from an artifact that he has collected, this leads him to go find another artifact, that is when he is stricken with fear nodding that something awful might be headed this way. From then on out this movie is golden it gets you closer and closer to the edge of your seat with every scene. All of the acting in this movie was spectacular, I can feel every bit of the pain that is expressed by the characters in the movie. Linda Blair might not have been able to make those awful voices that the demon had but she did all of the acting it is so off putting throughout the film. There is a scene in which she is just sitting on her bed giggling with her hands up to her face that sent chills throughout my body. This movie hits every level that it looks to right on the head, it is perfect.
The imagery in this movie is golden, just letting it sit on some scenes, and then cutting away from some scenes. I know that that upset some people when it cut away from the scene when something insane happened, but I thought it was great it put the characters in such an awful position with nothing to do but take in what happen and we are given the same horror, we have to deal with the scene we just saw knowing that there was no real way to stop it. Along with that imagery came the music, the high pitched squeal that gets louder and louder. This has been used in so many horror movies and has just turned out to a just turned out to be a cheap jump scare. This movie gives nothing cheap and is all real horror from beginning to end. Costumes in the film are fine everyone is wearing clothes of the years it was made so it looks fine. One thing that this movie excelled with though is the practical effects the makeup on Regan along with the actions sometimes make you forget that this was once a little girl because all I could see on scene was a horrifying demon. Along with that there might be a scene or two where vomit is involved and it is so repulsive that I can feel the disgust of the actors.
There are a couple of messages I found to be very prominent in this film, first being that of faith. This film is very much faith affirming despite having the "devil" in about three fourths of the film. A man of God, a man who spends his time in worship is at a loss with his faith and doesn't know what to do this film brings him to a spot in which he must believe to succeed. To talk further work spoil the film but the ending confirms this theme even more. There is another part of the this film that I found a theme, it has to do with the the character Chris McNeal's profession as an actress. At first when watching this the only problem I had with the film was that I didn't understand why Chris was an actress or what it added to the story. However with having watched it 3 times in the past week I realized it has to do with everything. Chris is at the top of world she is high and mighty, when I think of people who are at the top of piles of money it is some actors and directors. So that is where she is sitting, then she has something awful happen, so she goes to a doctor and then another and another, all of the best in the world as money is of no issue, while all of this is happening, Father Karras is on the opposite end of that he is broke and is living somewhere very low end and when someone close to him becomes sick they are placed in an awful hospital that no one should ever be kept in but he has his faith. Chris does everything that she can with money but is eventually humbled when she realises that she can not buy he daughter out of what is going on and that she must also have faith to get what is best for Regan. Money is not everything.
When looking at the novel versus the book these two are about as close as they get. This is due to the author William Blatty being the screenplay writer of the film. He had taken writing classes but it is not that simple to transfer an entire novel to a two hour movie but it is done seamlessly. I happen to like the movie a bit more but that is because I am more naturally drawn towards movies as they are a passion for me.
This film is perfect for me as I have not been able to find any flaws. This is the pinnacle of horror films and it has earned all of the publicity that it has. This movie is not evil though it might be about it. On a scale of 1 to 10 this film gets a 10/10. It is perfect in my eyes and I suggest it to all those who do not mind the swearing.
Review of The Exorcist
