A Powerful and Novel Approach to Horror Cinema

Rating: 10/10 (3 October 2008)

Oddly, it's sometimes the repulsiveness of imagery that surpasses "horror," becoming captivating in its revoltingness. This contrary advantage of primeval effect is the core of Friedkin's vision. Regan's thrashings are ugly, ferocious, but they've such effect on us since it's seen: Friedkin directs the viewpoint of these moments from the point-of-view of those seeing.
And each setting's especially natural. This is also what made Jaws so exciting. No Transylvanian mansion with thunder, lightning. Throughout the whole scene between Burstyn and Cobb's detective, there's a deathlike silence. Just their voices, the sporadic tinkle of a cup. This amplifies our sensations. Burstyn's agitation becomes ours. Seconds after Cobb departs, Friedkin stuns the tautness with a piercing clatter and Regan's shouts. Burstyn dashes inside the room to terrified astonishment as books, papers, records, toys orbit hysterically.
Visually plot items are realized with that contrary entertainment. Friedkin augments the authenticity of these scenes by not underscoring them. The dialogue, sounds, images bring the effect. And Friedkin knows how to develop to that dreadful pragmatism. Firstly, Regan says her bed shakes. We glimpse a black-and-white photograph of her, adding plain uneasiness to her pose. When she urinates on the floor at the party, the abnormality becomes visual. Seeing's believing.
Friedkin intensifies each new shock, culminating in the masturbation, surely the most powerful moment due to the degree of debasement. We're constrained to watch, as Friedkin's wicked advantage is the lure of unspecified dread brought alive. Friedkin creates apprehension with his first image, black-and-white sunrise dissolving to an overwhelming orange. One practically feels the gleaming surges of heat. At the archaeological site, picks strike soil, sounds intensifying, shriller still when Von Sydow trembles finding the talisman.
Apprehension becomes conflict. Von Sydow informs the keeper that he must leave. Then, he's almost run down by a black horse and carriage, a malevolent forewarning. Friedkin visually achieves a sensation that something horrific's impending. Von Sydow searches through the ruins, and faces Pazuzu's massive, menacing statue. Dogs fight ferociously, the effigy rigid versus the wailing winds while Von Sydow's bowed figure stands in bold resolve, action illuminating character.
The feeling of dread and fear lives not just in the shadows but in broad daylight. Friedkin dissolves to barking neighborhood dogs in the damp gray over Georgetown, the bedroom of Burstyn, who hears bizarre scraping from her attic. Friedkin's taken us to a climax, a fearsome, unrestrained world, then deposits like a ride, gets underway again to the next climax. In illustrating the bizarre but accurate, the biological and cognitive potential justify the possession, also utilized to exciting, vile effect.
As each medical option's reduced, the tension mounts as we see the possession intensify, causing Friedkin's attaining our surrender, agreement. Burstyn's sure Regan necessitates a priest. Burstyn's portrayed, basically, as an atheist, though her passion in this situation persuades us that she's certain her daughter's definitely possessed. The horrors begin in ordinary settings. Once we behold the cross masturbation, Friedkin's taken us from leg-pullers like attic scratchings to Regan's vicious, outlandish doings.
Screams intensify tension, topping scenes emotionally. Friedkin employs sound as character. We're pacified fleetingly by silence, then the scream shocks. The distinction from tranquility to disorder in the dream sequence has the upshot of thrashing us instantaneously from relative comfort to a animal anxiety.
Moreover, the handling of light contrasts is effective for its paradoxes. As in the dream, silver medal strikes black rock, cut to Regan in a vibrantly lit examination room, an icon of righteousness descending onto blackness, contrasted with Regan's hideous exploit in the barren luminosity. Familiarities such as tennis-playing students juxtaposed with Inspector consulting Miller about church defilements and McGowran's bizarre demise. Even in the daytime terror of the masturbation a gloomily shadowed image crowns the moment before the subsequent luster. Friedkin's most dazzling paradoxical disparity's in Von Sydow's re-emergence, a black outline in the lone gleam, wearing all black, invigorating the impression of wickedness Friedkin's founded, handsome visualizations assuming threatening connotations.
The possession's cruelty is directly counter to Miller's vulnerability-become-power-via-selflessness. When he's introduced, he's visiting his mother in a dilapidated apartment. Her delight at seeing him is unadulterated, but he's swarming with self-reproach. He advises other priests but thinks he's losing his faith. When his mother dies, his remorse crushes. Nevertheless, despite private difficulty and misgiving, he does battle for a stranger. While he's not swayed it's a possession, Miller acquires the bishop's consent to do an exorcism. To Miller's disenchantment, Bishop thinks it best to have a man with practice: Von Sydow exorcized a demon years ago in Africa. Friedkin again expresses that Von Sydow and the demon are deep-rooted enemies, from their confrontation in the ruins to Regan's manifestation intensifying with Von Sydow's entrance.
Friedkin advocates no principles, just illustrates the dismay defeated via fierce eradication. Nevertheless, it's the majestic shock of Miller's ultimate revelation and sacrifice that outdoes "horror," becoming enlivening. It's all the power of a twilight sky observed through a nihilistic lens.