The Exorcist
Categories: Halloween Reviews, Movie Reviews
Written By: Eric Jensen
Rating: 
A lot of times you’ll see The Exorcist take the number one spot on lists of the greatest horror movies. The first time I saw it, as a wee ‘un, I was pretty dang blowed away and very inclined to agree with that assessment. Then there came a time when I thought I would be just too cool for school, and I’d say: “The Exorcist? Pah! That’s not scary, that’s just a bunch of tinkling and dirty words and occasional weird masturbatory process. Totally overrated, that!” Then, some time later, I realized I was just being an asshole, and The Exorcist really is pretty danged great. Is it the “best ever?” That’s essentially impossible to say. But I know this much: it still manages to scare me after more than a dozen viewings, and it’s effective in everything it tries to do.
Much of the reason the movie works so well is that Linda Blair as Regan is so adorable before she turns all green and gross. She starts out as just the cutest kid there ever was, making stuff out of clay and stealing cookies, and her radical transformation just breaks your heart. As we watch this innocent little girl, who never did a bit of harm to anybody, go from cute as a bug’s ear to a foul-mouthed puking monster, something inside us dies. There’s a scene earlyish in the picture, before the full on crazy-ass demon manifestations start happening, where little Regan wanders into her mother’s cocktail party, harrasses people with horrible images of their own fiery deaths, and then starts whizzing uncontrollably on the floor. For the audience, this is a loss of innocence unrivaled anywhere else. It makes you want to call out to the heavens “Why? Why are you tormenting this dear, sweet girl?” By making you believe in little Regan and putting you firmly on her side, the movie set you up to be hugely unsettled later on with things start getting really freaky.
Aside from the fact that you just want to give the poor girl a big hug, there’s also the fact that, oh yeah, this movie is freaky as all hell. Unearthly voices and gross wounds come out of Regan when you least suspect them. Images of scary faces flash on screen or are hidden in the background from time to time, and you can’t help but holler: “Woah, what the hell was that creepy thing?” Especially when the spooky face is laid in to the background, the whole eerie atmosphere is amped up. For whatever reason, seeing this evil dude staring at you from a reflection in a cabinet makes you tense as hell, and keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout the scene.
But if we’re gonna talk about what’s scary, we’re definitely gonna have to bring up one scene in particular. It’s a scene that originally wasn’t included in the movie, but was put in for the so-called Version You’ve Never Seen (now, of course, everybody’s seen it, but whatever). Unlike the revisionism that’s gone on in a certain movie series I could name, the additions made to The Exorcist actually tend to improve the film, and this scene in particular is a doozy. So what is it that happens? Well, when you least expect it, Regan comes running down the stairs of her house. Running down the stairs? you ask. That doesn’t sound scary! But did I forget to mention that, oh yeah, she’s all bent over backwards scuttling down the stairs on all fours like some kind of weird spidercrabbeast? And as if that didn’t turn your stomach enough, she concludes her creepy sidling by putting he face all up in the camera and spewing blood from her grimacing mouth. Aaaagh! It gives me the creeping heebies just thinking about it, and seeing it on the screen is enough to make me huddle in a corner clutching my knees to my chest and crying like a little bitch. So yeah, that’s pretty spooky.
No discussion of The Exorcist would be complete without bringing up the matter of the title. Since it isn’t called The Possessed Little Girl, I guess we should assume that one of our two defenders of the faith is the true main character and focus of the film. And since the real exorcist in the movie is Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow), and since he’s got a history with the particular demon inahabiting Regan, maybe he’s the main character. But so much of the film focuses on the younger priest, Father Karras, and his crisis of faith and feelings of guilt. The movie surely must be “about” one of these two characters, the possession only happening to show us how he deals with the situation and his life as a whole. That’s why it’s called The Exorcist, right? Well, fuck that. I say we’re here to see a possessed girl, and all your hoity-toity theories about deeper meanings can bite me. Bring on the projectile vomiting pre-teen, please!
So is it the greatest horror movie of all time? I don’t know. It’s certainly one of my personal favorites. And it’s capable of scaring the bejesus out of me every time I watch it, and that’s pretty high praise. Usually I watch a horror movie and just smile at how awesome it is when people get their brains beat in. But in The Exorcist when people start levitating and turning their heads round and rooms start getting inexplicably cold and all this scary shit really starts goin’ down…a-jibbly-jibbly. So that’s my final word on it. Five out of five jibblies.
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