Only interesting for specific audience

Rating: 5/10 (7 September 2011)

The Exorzist is a rather long movie. And yet you get the feeling, that crucial scenes and information are missing in order to shorten it. Maybe it's because the movie deals with a story, that takes place over a long period of time. Still there would have been better ways to keep the playtime at a reasonable length. For example, you see a lot of scenes with Damien and his mother. But the maybe most important scene about her death and him finding her is only referred to in lines shortly and not even shown, even though it affected his live greatly.
There were many discussions about The Exorzist, after it was aired. It is understandable, since there are many gross and violent scenes involving a child (Linda Blair). You don't see this kind of things happen oft in movies and it's kind of disturbing. At the same time I noticed the poor effects used in the movie. Regans face changes in some scenes in an unlikely way. That may be because those scenes were played by Eileen Dietz instead of Linda Blair, due to youth protection reasons. A lot of the lines are surprisingly amusing, such as the talks about clean rats at the loft.
This movie might be interesting to watch, but it draws its appeal almost entirely from the violence and nastiness. The acting is sometimes bad. The Exorzist is altogether uncommon enough to keep you interested but the story is rather superficial, so I'd recommend the movie only to a specific target group, that enjoys this kind of things. For anyone else, it's maybe average entertainment. 5/10