A Pretentious Mess

Rating: 5/10 (8 October 2000)

When I first saw this movie in 1973, I was scared and confused by it. I
was also 15. Seeing it again for the first time since then, I can say it
held up well in one respect: it's still confusing as hell.
The movie suggests at the outset that Evil is Afoot with a prolonged
sojourn to Iraq, where Max von Sydow's archeological crew has come
across some biblical knickknacks and ugly statues. One of these
knickknacks apparently has Great Significance, because von Sydow
spends a long time looking at it. Later on this tchotchke will inexplicably
turn up at the scene of a suspicious death. How did it get there? That's
the least of the unanswered questions that this movie leaves strewn all
over the screen like so much projectile vomit.
Meanwhile over in the good old USA, the daughter of Chris McNeil
(Ellen Burstyn), Regan, is acting strangely, and not just because Linda
Blair can't act. She has gone from the sweet, sensitive pubescent girl
with the drawing talent of a precocious 6 year old, to a foul-mouthed
masturbating demon. Sounds like puberty to me. But in this film,
nothing is as simple as it seems. Cue "Tubular Bells."
Along the way William Friedkin sets the tone of omnipresent menace by
suggesting that Reagan's possession is part of a Larger Pattern of
Things Falling Apart, pieces of which include antiwar protests, a rising
divorce rate, and gay film directors. William Friedkin, meet Bill Bennett
and Lynne Cheney; Bill, Lynne, William Friedkin.
The film strives for big statements about Evil and Faith, but doesn't
seem to have a clue what it's talking about. Why does the Devil pick
this nondescript preteen to toss around like a Cabbage Patch Doll?
Father Merrin tells the guilt-ridden Father Damien it's so that he can
convince us humans that we are nothing more than rutting animals. Oh,
I see. And all this time I thought it was Linda Blair's subsequent film
career that did that.
The film is not without its shocking moments (the most grisly, perhaps
ironically, being an excruciating spinal tap scene), but the payoff is so
brief, the buildup so tediously portentous, and the happy denouement
so absurdly improbable (why doesn't the Devil just hop back into
Regan?) that all we're left with are those nagging unanswered
questions, the biggest being, WHAT THE HELL IS LEE J. COBB
DOING IN THIS FILM?