The Exorcism of Emily Rose
The Exorcism of Emily Rose – 1 out of 5 stars
I will start by saying that I'm agnostic with heavy atheistic leanings so I'm not really all that wow'ed by the events portrayed in the movie, which claims to be based on a true story. A good starting point for learning the factual side of the background story may be found on Wikipedia. Some of the key points are that these events took place two years after the release of the Exorcist while the country was in the middle of a "paranormal panic" and that the church later stated that she was in fact not possessed. That being said, I'll review this like I would a movie about Santa Claus or the tooth fairy–on its entertainment value alone.
It sucked. It is a movie with a severe identity crisis–as if possessed by two bad film makers. On the one hand it wants to be a spooky horror film while on the other it tries to be a court room drama. It does neither very well. The attempts at horror fall pretty flat with the most scary moments being her envisioning people as demons that appear more like hissing cats than anything particularly scary. The court room scenes are too busy vilifying the prosecutor and medical science's explanation of the phenomena that were (supposedly) witnessed to build any real drama.
I, of course, am biased as I stated before. I find myself leaning more and more to the atheist position on a daily basis. This is coupled with my loss of faith in human beings to tell fact from fiction. The film industry's increasing ability to portray anything and everything with amazing degrees of realism only further serves to loosen peoples' already tentative grip on reality. I would not be shocked to learn that just as many people believe in hobbits as angels and UFOs.
January 17th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
I agree, this movie was a let down. The only part I really liked were the "demons that appear more like hissing cats," at least in that sequence where she's running around in the rain and then in the church. Granted, that was only 10 seconds of the film…which says a lot about the rest of the movie.