The Exorcism: Tinkering with The Exorcist is a Case of Damned If You Do... and That's It

By Chris Knight

Rating: C-minus

“This is a psychological drama wrapped in the skin of a horror movie.”

Sorry, that’s not part of the review. That’s director Pete (Adam Goldberg), discussing The Georgetown Project, the working title of his remake of The Exorcist, on the set of which the real-smovie The Exorcism is set.

With me so far? Well, strap in because it gets even more confusing. The Exorcism stars Russell Crowe as Anthony Miller, an actor who is starring in The Georgetown Project, playing the role of the priest.

David Hyde Pierce and Russell Crowe in The Exorcism

Crowe also starred in last year’s The Pope’s Exorcist, playing a real-life priest named Gabriele Amorth. That one was so bad it was damned - well, not literally but you know what I mean - by the International Association of Exorcists, a real group (look it up) that Amorth co-founded in 1990. 

This one? Also pretty bad, I must confess. It’s one of those movies where, short of any actual existential terrors to throw at the audience, the sound engineers merely crank up the volume from time to time so that a door closing sounds like a cannon going off. Our Lady of Jump Scares preserve us!

Anthony has been brought in after the previous actor died on the set - suicide, everyone thinks, but we know better because we saw something possess him before the opening credits even rolled.

Anthony is a mess, an alcoholic with a dead wife and a distant daughter (Ryan Simpkins) who has come back to stay with him after being kicked out of university. He gets her a job on what turns out to be a haunted film set. Real dad of the year stuff.

Early press for The Exorcism suggested there would be some tension in the plot over whether Anthony was being literally possessed or only figuratively so.

Alas, the script, from director Joshua John Miller and frequent writing partner M.A. Fortin, doesn’t trust us to watch from such a liminal space, This is demonic possession, straight up, no chaser. There’s even an actual priest-adviser (David Hyde Pierce) on set to confirm things.

The Exorcism is Crowe’s show start to finish, and he does the best he can with the material at hand. Unfortunately, a good deal of this material requires him to perform as a washed-up hack actor, a job he does almost too well.

(That’s a real compliment in case it’s not clear. Although for a stellar example of a great actor playing a bad one, check out Jennifer Lawrence in Mockingjay Part 1, filming a propaganda video with Philip Seymour Hoffman as her exasperated director.)

It’s actually Hyde Pierce who delivers the most nuanced performance here. You’re never quite certain if he’s a true believer, a fallen angel, or one of, you know, THOSE priests, or just a man of the cloth who’s learned that the best way to navigate the secular realm is to be unpredictable. There’s a scene at a party where someone asks if he’d like something and he answers blithely: “Just alcohol.”

But there isn’t enough solidity in The Exorcism to hang on a cross on, and the whole plot gets creakier the farther on we go. It’s never even clear why Crowe’s character hasn’t been hospitalized, institutionalized or arrested long before the final scene.

The original The Exorcist, which turned 50 last year, has proven a difficult nut to crack by those who would follow it, precede it, remake it or reboot it. Exorcists II and III were not well received; 2004’s Exorcist: The Beginning was a critical and commercial failure; and a planned 2020 reboot failed to materialize. In its place came last year’s Exorcist: The Believer, first of a planned trilogy from director David Gordon Green, although parts 2 and 3 have been quietly cancelled.

The latest news is that horror director Mike Flanagan (Oculus, Doctor Sleep) will deliver a “bold new take” on the story in the near future.

But where this so-called franchise is concerned, it seems to always be a case of damned if you do. That’s it. Just damned if you do.

The Exorcism. Directed by Joshua John Miller. Starring Russell Crowe, Ryan Simpkins, and David Hyde Pierce. Opens June 21 in theatres.