Caseus Archivelox: The Exorcist

2002-03-19
When I was younger, I remember my dad telling me that when he saw this movie during a summer when he was living alone in New York he was afraid of walking home that night. When I first saw this movie about five years ago, I was not scared by it, but could see how it could be scary. When I saw it last year, I found it boring. Seeing it again last week has not helped the movie at all.

The beginning of the movie has little bearing at all upon the rest of it, and could be skipped entirely with no detriment to the rest of the movie. The fear of a child being possessed would have been more effective had it not been played out over such a long time. I am not normally a person who likes short movies over long movies due only to length, but it this case, it could have stood to be much shorter.

The priest who is having a crisis of confidence in God is a time honored and old tradition, and this movie just uses it as another trite way to get the audience who normally would not believe in the idea of a character being possessed believing. The problem occurs in the fact that most people do not believe in demonic possession and thus when the inevitable, from the standpoint that the good guys do have something of a victory at the end, happy conclusion occurs, viewers are happy. Many other viewers will have gone to get some much-needed sleep.

In short, the movie was too long.