The Last Rites (Exorcist - The Beginning (DVD))

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Exorcist - The Beginning (DVD)
Date:	17/02/06 (467 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great lead role, good story, lots of gore

Disadvantages: Poor CGI, a bit OTT at times

One of the advantages of posting on sites like this is the chance to put right a wrong that has befallen a movie. “Exorcist: The Beginning” was savaged by the critics on its release. Especially vehement were the reviewers in the U.S who accused the movie of being pedestrian, ill conceived and generally, just not very good at all. It was always a worry when the project's first director, John Frankenheimer, died in 2002, prompting the departure of lead, Liam Neeson. This was followed by Paul Schrader’s film being scrapped and Renny Harlin was brought in to re-shoot from scratch. However, given the desperate state of the previous Exorcist follow ups including the simply awful effort starring Richard Burton (Exorcist 2: The Heretic) then maybe the original 1973 masterpiece should have been left to stand alone for eternity after all. Notwithstanding all of this, this most recent outing was far better than the critics made out. Curiously, Schrader's version was finally released in May 2005 and called “Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist” I can’t compare notes because I haven’t seen it but therein lies another trip to the DVD shop.

The prequel opens in Cairo, circa 1949, with Father Merrin having abandoned his faith after being forced to take part in some Nazi atrocities. Merrin has been reduced to a hard-drinking archaeologist haunted by his past. Hired by a mysterious benefactor in a kind of Raiders of the Lost Ark scenario, the former priest is paid to inspect a dig in Africa after the discovery of a buried church dating back to the early Christian era. Merrin arrives to be met by representatives of the Catholic Church who have taken an interest in the dig. With a mass graveyard present and an increase in mysterious deaths of those both linked with the dig and the local, African tribe, everything starts to point to the church as a focal point for the evil that’s spreading like a fast-moving cancer. The natives have seen this all before and when a baby is stillborn covered in maggots, they suspect that an evil spirit is being harboured in the body of a young boy. With the locals determined to exorcise the demon, Merrin finds himself fighting for the boy’s life as well as the collective sanity of everyone at the site.

First of all, the bad stuff. Well, the CGI is poor at times. The hyenas conjured up to attack one of the village boys suck and we have the customary problem with re-creating a swarm of flies. I’ve yet to see this done with any degree of authenticity in any movie! The movie is ponderous initially although things do speed up around half way through. The audience is never quite sure whether it’s the devil or just a demon we are dealing with. Not that it’s that crucial, I suppose, but I did find it mildly annoying throughout the Exorcist franchise that we leap around from Lucifer to Pazuzu to Legion to the Devil so you are never quite sure who our hero is actually trying to vanquish. After all, it’s Pazuzu in the Richard Burton prequel but Pazuzu never gets mentioned in this latest re-make.

Renny Harlin (Deep Blue Sea, The Long Kiss Goodnight) directs the movie with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer at times. Whilst theological notions are downplayed but still present adding the credibility that the movie craves, we get some decent comparisons between the evil presence menacing the dig, and more secular evil like the Holocaust that robbed Merrin of his faith. There's the occasional in-joke like the radio playing "We'll Meet Again" for Merrin at one point and there’s even time for a twist in the tale at the end. Of course, if you’ve seen any of the other Exorcist movies then you’ll probably work out most of the plot for yourself.

What I liked most about the film was the story itself. Written by William Wisher jr. the screenplay takes the opening shot of a mass crucifixion at the site of a major battle from the times of the Crusades and weaves it into a coherent tale. The concept of people being crucified upside down is nicely developed as the principle characters discover the desecration of the image of Christ on the Cross in the church as well as some rather, unpleasant, ceremonial deaths that further underline the presence of evil. I didn’t find this gratuitous at all although there is plenty of gore in the movie that emphasises its 18 certificate.

Stellan Skarsgard is excellent as Merrin. Charged with the difficult tasks of both following in the seminal steps of Max Von Sydow from the much loved 1973 movie and finding the creativity to play a priest who has lost his faith only to eventually find it again, Skarsgard is eminently believable and far and away the best actor in the movie. His role closely reprises the original script played out by Von Sydow and I thought the flashbacks to the Nazi atrocities that made him lose his faith were neatly woven into the plot. Skarsgard looks suitably disillusioned for much of the movie, only being woken from his general apathy by the increasingly bizarre goings on around him.

Izabella Scorupco as Sarah, the resident nurse, is pretty much anonymous in acting terms playing opposite Skarsgard for the most part and the support acting in general is about what you’d expect from most horror flicks. Throw in the presence of the British Army, a local African tribe and the puss-filled face of the racist Jeffries (Alan Ford) then you start to get a feel for why the movie came to be criticised so much. If you are sensitive to racist comments then look away when the Jeffries character is on screen although how abhorrent the term “fuzzy wuzzy” is nowadays is anyone’s guess. Of course, the intent is there and can still cause offence.

"Exorcist: The Beginning" was much better than I thought it was going to be. With a credible plot, some great set pieces and some careful thought around the story, generally the movie works. It has plenty of weaknesses (acting, special effects, ponderous opening) but for all that I enjoyed it by the time I’d got through the lengthy finale. For fans of the franchise then this is a much more bearable outing than “The Heretic” follow up from 1977 and for horror fans in general then this is every bit as good as anything else the movie had to compete with at the time. This is definitely not a classic and will be instantly forgotten but if you do fancy 114 minutes of gore, ritualistic killings and mumbo jumbo then this is well worth a watch.

Thanks for reading

Mara.

Summary: Review of the movie