When a demonic spirit creeps its way into the lives of twelve-year-old Regan (Linda Blair) and her mother Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), Chris turns to a pair of priests in order to find a solution. The Exorcist is Chris’s journey through the occult and the spiritual–doing all that she can to save her daughter before it’s too late.
There’s so much exposition present throughout the course of the film that the story becomes cumbersome and boring. I understand how important it is to develop characters and to ensure that viewers can understand and appreciate the characters, but there is such a thing as going overboard–and I think that’s what happens at the start of The Exorcist. At every turn there is another bit of information being fed to viewers, and a lot of the time the information seems irrelevant. Again and again I thought back to pieces of information about the characters that we were given early in the film, because it’s like they were put out into the world for no purpose other than just to have characters speak. The Exorcist is full of useless dialogue–and the film could have easily been thirty-five or forty minutes shorter.
With that, I found myself bored from time to time. There wasn’t enough interesting or relevant information to keep me focused, and I found myself fading. The Exorcist begins with a ton of dialogue, and not much really happens throughout the first act. The film never regains its footing–and the opening act effectively sinks the film before it ever gets going.
While I don’t think The Exorcist stands up to the test of time, I can certainly understand the shock that would have existed when viewers first watched the film back in the early nineteen-seventies. The operative word, however, is “shock.” Nothing about this film is scary, nothing about this film (other than maybe the idea of a mother dealing with a sick daughter) lends itself to being part of the horror genre–and the film ultimately falls under the umbrella of drama, not horror.
That aforementioned shock, however, is so important to the film–it’s so important to the continued success of The Exorcist. As much as the inconsequential dialogue plays a role in pulling the film down, Regan’s dialogue throughout her possession does just the opposite. While I refuse to subscribe to the idea that The Exorcist is a horror film–Regan and her dialogue is the only window into the potential for horror–but, again, this is much more of a drama. Having a child make sexual advances, cursing at priests, and becoming far beyond unruly is the piece of the film that manages to appeal to horror fans, the one thing that allows the film to dip its toe in that genre and remain just slightly present in that corner of cinema. These moments are extreme, and I can certainly understand how this might terrify parents–and it’s this piece, and only this piece, of the film that manages to stand the test of time.
I had high hopes for The Exorcist. I was hoping that the mature content of the film, and the fact that I’ve only heard about how terrifying the film is, would allow this film to stand up to some of the horror greats and to appeal to me when watching for the first time in my thirties. I was terribly disappointed in this film, as nearly nothing is able to live up to the hype. Sure, Blair’s acting in the intense situations are appreciated, the make-up department put in some serious work and ultimately delivered, and the mere concept is interesting–but there are so many negatives that extend themselves throughout the course of The Exorcist, that it makes it too easy to overlook the positives. The over-extensive exposition that often leads to nothing, the lack of a true horror element, and a slow-moving narrative all cause the film to fall flat. I don’t think that The Exorcist struggles as a result of how old it is, I simply believe that it’s an average film, one that needed the cult following that it currently has in order to fuel its success.
Directed by William Friedken.
Written by William Peter Blatty.
Starring Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Linda Blair, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, Jason Miller, etc.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐½/10
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