May have been horrifying in 1973, considerably less to in 2010

Rating: 6/10 (29 October 2010)

I've never known of any other movie to be so notoriously regarded as The Exorcist, surpassing the hysteria of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Evil Dead as a film that was just too horrifying for mass public consumption. It had been "banned" in the UK for decades (actually, Warner just never submitted it to the then very strict BBFC) and finally saw the light of day around 1999. I liked it at first, but now, viewing it older, wiser and a lot more jaded I can't imagine why people took offense to this.
It's useless reciting the plot, you all know it. But I'll just boil it down to a single sentence "Little girl possessed by low-rent demon". That's right...Demon, not Devil. Said Demon (Pazuzu) apparently has psychic and telekinetic powers but never uses them to escape from the confines of the bedroom for some reason.
Doctors are baffled as to why little Reagan is acting up and recommend an exorcism. A grief-stricken priest pops round to have a look at Reagan for himself but isn't immediately convinced even though her face is unnaturally contorted and her eyes have changed to an inhuman color. Good detective work there!
My main problem with The Exorcist is that it keeps cutting away to side-stories which deflates whatever tension Reagan's suffering generates. It almost ends up being a movie of subplots with no main narrative.
I appreciate it from a film-making perspective in regards to the sound design and editing, and the fact that obnoxious amounts of CGI and intrusive music are not needed to create dread and mystery. But the story leaves too many open ends and just didn't satisfy me.
It's hard to scare movie audiences these days. The only trick any filmmaker has left is to make them believe it's real. But The Exorcist fails on this. 1973 audiences were clearly just a little bit more naive and innocent.