Who cares about milestones in the history of horror? This is a damned good film.

Rating: 9/10 (11 April 2001)

I saw the new version a week or two ago. To be honest, I had to look up later which bits were added for the (ahem) director's cut and which had been there all along; it seems to me that the additions have more or less no effect, apart from making the film longer - and since "The Exorcist" is such a strong, absorbing film, the longer the better.
Whether it's THE classic horror movie - whether it's a horror movie at all - is something I couldn't care less about. It bears no resemblance to slasher flicks. I'm not even sure what about it (if anything) makes it frightening. I recall being the teensiest bit frightened when I saw it on video in the mid-afternoon many years ago; just recently, in the cinema, I was not frightened in the least. But who cares. "The Exorcist" succeeds as work of fiction, rather than a mere heartbeat stimulator, because of its humanity. The priests are all human. So much so that I felt positive affection for the Catholic Church, without ever being manipulated into so feeling - odd, but there you are. Regan is portrayed in the early scenes as a genuinely nice child, someone you instinctively warm towards, and so we continue to care about her however many unspeakable acts her possessed body may later perform. The point is this : the film cares about its characters - ALL its characters - and despite the grim goings-on, it isn't particularly cruel to them when it comes time to decide their fates.
Satan, of course, is not a human character, but even he has been intelligently portrayed. Those who have read the depiction of satanic possession in C.S. Lewis's "Perelandra" will recognise this as the very same Prince of Darkness - not so much a being of infinite evil as one of infinite, childish spite. (Why does Satan bother to take control of human bodies? What's in it for him? "Spite" is really the only answer that makes sense, so spite it is.) The difference between "Perelandra" and "The Exorcist" (well, one of them) is that the latter doesn't console either the audience or its characters by repeating several dozen times in big bold underlined letters that there IS a loving god who is omnipotent and who will win out over Satan in the end, etc. But surely this is a strength.
One tiny weakness is the fact that the actual exorcism - if you got your stopwatch out, I suspect you would be surprised how little of the film's time it takes up - isn't as interesting as everything leading up to it. How, exactly, can these two priests force a demon out of this child's body? Be honest now: what does all this splashing of holy water actually achieve? How can we see the first few minutes of the ritual as going anywhere when we are told that the last exorcism Father Merrin performed lasted over a month? The film seems to stall. And the sudden conclusion is - well, sudden. Still, it's not the cop-out it may appear to be at first. Indeed, it's rather subtle, in the way it neatly rounds off Father Karras's story.