May God Be With You

Rating: 10/10 (13 December 2007)

An innocent little girl, the daughter (Linda Blair, believably innocent) of a popular actress(Ellen Burstyn, a performance for the ages), is beginning to exhibit unbelievably odd behavior. A garrulous detective (Lee J. Cobb, fun and sneaky)investigates a random murder. Elsewhere, a middle-aged priest (Jason Miller, passionate and wonderful) who is forced to abandon his mother for his priesthood struggles with his cause. Elsewhere, still, is an elderly priest (Max Von Sydow, magnificent)who has come face to face with evil...and survived. All these characters will collide at the climax of an unspeakable and powerfully dark horror: this is The Exorcist. The one film continuously labeled as The Scariest Movie of All Time earns it's title unlike so many before it...and after it. A talented cast of actors at the absolute top of their game, a director who will go just far enough to frighten and move the viewer, and an eerily suspenseful backdrop all give credence to one of the few films in the horror genre to be taken seriously by pompous critics. Some think of The Exorcist as an evil film. It simply isn't. What The Exorcist is, what it represents, is an earthly battle between good and evil. An extremely strong and disturbing drama that just happens to be about the supernatural. Will The Exorcist still frighten viewers today? Depends on the average viewer. Film-goers have become desensitized by all the mindless violence and cheese-ball horrors that have come and gone since then. But the film hits the viewer in an entirely different way. It shakes your beliefs and challenges your faith. The subliminal imagery still holds up to this day, while the less sophisticated scares are still quite powerful. Try getting the score, Tubular Bells, out of your head even days later. If you are a film lover and you still haven't seen this, horror fan or not, make time for this one. It will do what movies do best: Entertain, move, even frighten you.