The Exorcist

Rating: 9/10 (2 May 2015)

I have no idea what I was thinking when I decided to do a project on "The Exorcist" for college. I don't like being scared, and avoid horror films religiously (pun unintended). I am scared of my own shadow. So the proper course of action when told I had to do a presentation on something, of any medium, that showed tropes of the American Gothic, was to go ahead and do it on what's considered by many as the scariest film of all time.
My boyfriend (who will be addressed always as Himself), was delighted at the prospect of watching me squirm through a horror film. So we watched it on Valentine's Day. How romantic.
"The Exorcist" is based off the best selling novel of the same name, by William Peter Blatty. Blatty also wrote the screenplay and won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his efforts. It tells the story of a little girl named Regan McNeil (Linda Blair), who appears to be possessed by some malevolent demon. Her mother, actress Chris McNeil (Ellen Burstyn) is beside herself with worry, and, at the advice of medical professionals, goes to a trouble priest named Damien Karras (Jason Miller), to request an exorcism.
The film is frightening, but not conventionally. The only jumpscare is that of the demon's face for a split second. No, this film is psychologically chilling. Yes, chilling. It effects you, deep down. One sees themselves within the demon, as the little girl struggling to cope. We identify with Karras, who is on the fence about his faith. We are in that freezing room covered in vomit; we are the strong priest who does not balk at the terror before him, we are the troubled Jesuit who does not know where to turn. We are the little girl in the bed, screaming obscenities; we are monsters.
Father Merrin (Von Sydow) says to Karras upon him asking why such a malignant source would infect an innocent girl "I think the point is to make us despair. To see ourselves as... animal and ugly. To make us reject the possibility that God could love us." Roger Ebert also said that the film sits on the fence between cinematic escapism and reality, that it makes us look inside ourselves. This is what makes the film terrifying; the fact that it shows us humans at our worst. We are, at some stage, the demon and the conflicted priest, the frantic parent and the tortured girl.
8.5/10