Movies & TV

I wanted to start this by saying that not only do I not watch a lot of supernatural horror movies but they also don't do a lot for me. It's a really big sub-genre of horror that has been heavily saturated with jump scares, tired tropes and just the over-familiarity of the audience with the material: a haunted house, an evil presence, objects flying around at random, a worried mother.

Yet, The Exorcist feels authentic and real and makes me believe in the terrible circumstances of it's story. Part of the reason for this is the careful it takes in to build up that story over the course of hour and a half before the exorcism even begins. Another part is the direction itself. This is a gorgeous movie even when we are not staring down the face of a demonic child playing with adults. Numerous scenes where people are just walking around in broad daylight as the camera follows them: rarely static and mostly in a panoramic shot as it moves with them, turns around, looks at people and things. All of this makes the film feel lush and heavy and serious, giving it an air of realism that I have seldom experienced in a movie of this genre. The beautiful landscape shots of Iraq and it's streets in the opening of the film still looks really good

The build-up is really well done as well: we have all seen the mother who is worried about her possessed child but to connect her character with the growing modern age and have her be an actress in the film industry is what really sets her apart. Her character (played by Ellen Burstyn) is a modern well-to-do western woman who takes her kids to doctors, psychiatrists and who more importantly believes in the modern medicine. We see her progressively getting more and more desperate as nothing she does or the doctors do helps her daughters and the answers they give her irritate us because they sound like vague bullshit. Interestingly the scenes most uncomfortable to watch are the tests being done on Regan by these machines in a lab.

The other important part of the plot is the priest played by Jason Miller. A priest who has begun to get tired of his spiritual beliefs. Life has been hard for him and he struggles to take care of his mental health and his mother's degrading health.

These two plotlines (and two characters) run almost separately for the first hour until, connected by a murder, they start to merge together almost organically as we build up to the exorcism itself. Throughout this, we see Regan's (the possessed kid) condition getting worse and worse as the demon does more and more shocking scenes on-screen which works as a very well realized pressure cooker for the movie's plot urging the characters to hurry up and try to save her.

It's a shame the exorcism itself fell a little flat for me; it's brilliantly lit and directed, the shot with Regan floating in the air as the priests repeat "The power of Christ compels you" looks like it could be painting, but it also looked a little dated to me.

The reason why I call it The Godfather of horror movies is that it does a lot of things right that even newer horror movies don't seem to have learned to do. Much like how The Godfather is still a better crime film than most criminal gangster type movies today.