Scariest film ever.

Rating: 10/10 (7 August 2006)

The exorcist gets under your skin... That's the best way i can describe it's effect. There's a sense of evil emanating from every frame. It's gritty and real. It pulls no punches. Even days after watching it, the effect still lingers... A deep chill in the very core of your being and a feeling that nothing is safe. I've seen the film 6 or 7 times now and it still hasn't lost it's punch.
It's a very rare kind of film. You have a top director, at the height of his talents with top collaborators working on a project with an aesthetic that's as extreme and dark as any low budget European horror movie. It has many scenes that would guarantee a NC17 rating in our age. In fact, the only way to really make this movie now would be to release an unrated version straight to video. It would suffer from the tighter budget and it wouldn't be the same.
Every image and sound is calculated to maximize the oppressive atmosphere. It's like watching a nightmare unfold, only more real. There are some pacing issues that bother me. The opening is a little slow and you might get bored, but it's necessary to establish the film's realism and make you believe in the characters and their world.
It may not be the best horror film ever.. But it's probably the scariest. Jaws and the Shining are better films overall, but the exorcist is more disturbing and frightening then either one of them. Taken as a whole it's more shocking and unforgiving than any Fucli film. Even the most disturbing films, like Joe D'Amato's "beyond the darkness" and Takashi Miike's "Visitor Q" barley surpass it in terms of vileness. The exorcist doesn't really show anything visually or contain any content that equal's films like visitor Q, but the way the subject matter is handled causes it to hit home very forcefully. There is no humor. It's utterly serious.
If you've never see it, believe the hype. The Exorcist is an astonishing creation, and there is nothing else like it out there. If your returning to it after a few years absence, you'll find that it hasn't aged at all.