A struggling actor risks demonic possession to save his career in Joshua John Miller’s bizarrely structured horror. Here’s our The Exorcism review.
When The Pope’s Exorcist rode into cinemas on a vespa last year, it proved two things. First, that Russell Crowe can play a very entertaining member of the clergy, and second, that exorcism movies don’t have to be all that scary – sometimes, they can just be a lot of fun.
Emboldened by Crowe’s Vespa-mounting prowess and with most of a film languishing in their attic, Miramax took The Georgetown Project out of its box and blew off a few cobwebs. Originally filmed in 2019, the studio reportedly ordered some extensive reshoots before selling it off to Vertical for distribution in the US (Vertigo Releasing in the UK). Along the way, someone changed the name to The Exorcism – an attempt to sound less like a Washington planning application that somehow makes it sound much more boring.
What we’re sadly obliged to call The Exorcism, then, finds our Crowe playing the exact mid-point between Regan MacNeil and a bad-tempered Grizzly. When the star of an unspecified horror movie remake (it’s The Exorcist) suffers an unexpected but perfectly-normal-thank-you-very-much accident, troubled actor Anthony (Crowe) is brought in to fight some demons.
Could these demons be some kind of metaphor? They could! Anthony has all sorts of them – he’s a lapsed Catholic with a dead wife, estranged daughter (Ryan Simpkins) and a drinking problem. He’s one Vietnam flashback from a full house of horrors.
That joyfully traumatic box-ticking makes The Exorcism’s first hour or so pretty enjoyable if you’re in the mood for it. Unlike the Dan Brown-style adventuring of The Pope’s Exorcist, this is quiet-quiet-bang horror all the way through. Sets are lit with bright white lights or no lights at all (symbolism!), the local priest doubles as a clinical psychologist, and poor Crowe keeps popping up in dark corners with odd veins on his neck.
Did I just say Crowe? I did! Joshua John Miller and co-writer MA Fortin have made the astute observation that the traditional possessed child would be a lot more threatening if they were the approximate size of an adolescent bear, and so the film takes an opportunity to compellingly flip the exorcist movie script. Its opening moments take great pains to cast Crowe in his underseen “cuddly dad” mode, all soft grey hoodies, flip-flops and parental concern, so that when the inevitable possession-ism takes root, the results are all the more… er… Well, he puts some eye shadow on, so that’s something.
Read more: The Pope’s Exorcist review: the power of Crowe compels you
If you’ve been waiting for a “but”, then here it is, shaped like a bus and with “third act reshoots” plastered on the side. While the first hour provides some entertainingly unsubtle, if not entirely original, possession horror fare, just as the plot reaches its dramatic peak it all quite literally stops making sense. What’s previously been a reasonably talk-y horror flick has a tiny handful of incredibly vague lines in the last 20 minutes leading up to the titular exorcism, as if it’s been stitched together from off-cuts in the editing room.
If this is how the script ended when the film started production, I’ll eat my cassock. It’s beguiling, really. Though we might never know whether the reportedly extensive post-Covid reshoots changed the film’s front end or its back, it really genuinely feels like the two sections were made by completely different people.
Still, whatever you can say about The Exorcism, it isn’t boring. The slightly meta, unconventional narrative is leant more weight by some generally solid performances (Adam Goldberg is having a great time as a very nasty film director) and it’s refreshing to find a by-the-numbers horror flick happy to whack us over the head with its themes rather than not having any themes at all. The last act is a very interesting case study into either studio interference or the dangers of too much creative control.
Whichever way the behind-the-scenes story turns out, I’m sure it’ll be fascinating. As for the front-of-camera stuff? I still had fun. Your mileage may vary.
The Exorcism is in UK cinemas 21st June.
