The Exorcist Review

Much like a pendulum clock, I sway from being horrified of horror films to being completely unphased by them. Depending on the day, time, or place, I could be absolutely horrified or ambivalent at best to the horrors on screen. Still, I avoid them as best I can, but inevitably there are those classics of the genre that will make themselves present from time to time. It was only a matter of time before I sat down to ingest William Friedkin’s classic, The Exorcist. A film that, although I’d not seen it until recently, had haunted me for years. There was a YouTube video that would throw a pop up at you, and as it turns out it was the possessed girl from this. If I could gather more scares from this masterclass of storytelling than I did from a seven-second YouTube video, I’d regard this film as a relative success. 

Tasked with performing an exorcism on the Regan MacNeil, a possessed girl, Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) and Father Lankester Merrin (Max von Sydow) are tasked with exorcising the demon that plagues MacNeil’s house. Friedkin’s work here, and a script from William Peter Blatty, muse not just on the controversial, secretive nature of exorcisms, but the loss of faith and struggles of a traditional priest in a relatively modern world. Their complacency and dependency on sin is highlighted well, and it makes for interesting, jagged moments from time to time. They never sway away from the central plot all that much, but they make for engaging additions to a story that would have been a straight horror if it weren’t for these junctions.  

That being said, the horror to be found within The Exorcist isn’t downplayed thanks to tangents with Sydow or Miller, if anything they’re emboldened. We see the two Fathers as flawed beings, they struggle with their own self-worth, and are then tasked with a ritual undertaking that hasn’t seen the public light for centuries. A cast of all-time greats bolsters the threat of demons and possessions, with the likes of Lee J. Cobb and Ellen Burstyn brushing shoulders with one another. Their performances are, as expected, truly masterful. They command the camera with such ease, Friedkin launches himself at their natural abilities and bottles them up into some of the most memorable and engaging scenes to come from the 1970s.  

The Exorcist is a frightfully brilliant piece of the horror genre, one of the few that can elicit some tremendous fear from its tightly written story and well-performed climax. Sydow and Friedkin work together with a tremendous ease, effortlessly churning out one of the greatest offerings of both their respective careers. It’s a testament to the talents of those involved in the production, especially when The Exorcist still remains as one of the few truly disturbing, horrifying feature films. It’s a phenomenal accomplishment for the genre, and perhaps one of the most engaging horror films available.