100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #128: The Exorcist (1973)
Directed by William Friedkin. Written by William Peter Blatty. Starring Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Jason Miller, Max von Sydow.
*content warning: it’s The Exorcist. If you choose to watch, you know what you’re getting into.*
Frankly, I’ve had some trouble writing this review. I think it’s mostly because I did not think The Exorcist was very scary.
Now don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty in this film that is disturbing, shocking, and gross. Much of the film relies on the shock element of having a little girl, who is supposed to be innocent, saying and doing some horrendous things under the influence of the demon. There’s also a significant amount of bodily fluids slung about and the slow decay of a living body into a demonic corpse. Those with weak stomachs should certainly avoid it. But I, personally, did not find it to be particularly scary or horrifying.
And I think that is the whole point of the film.
All of the demonic possession, the killing, the shock and horror, is all incidental to the real story at play here: a crisis of faith. Director William Friedkin said “Neither [Friedkin nor screenwriter William Peter Blatty] view it as a horror film. We view it as a film about the mysteries of faith. It’s easier for people to call it a horror film.”1 The protagonist of the film is Fr. Damien Karras (Jason Miller), a Jesuit and a psychiatrist who thinks the Church has moved past its need for exorcism. What in the past was thought to be demonic possession modern science now understands as mental illness. However, when the case of Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) comes before him, a case that doctors and psychiatrists are not able to explain, Fr. Karras must wrestle with the possibility that the demonic is real and that a choice must be made between good and evil.
Fr. Karras does not have an explicit crisis of faith in God; however, his scientistic epistemology does seem to have deeply affected his faith in crucial ways. He explicitly disavows the preternatural power of demons, thereby seemingly disavowing the miraculous entirely. He wrestles with the problem of evil and with his own vocation at several points in the film, especially because his duties as a priest force him to live in a different city than his elderly mother. When she dies halfway through the film, Fr. Karras is clearly burdened by a great deal of guilt, guilt which is exploited by the demon possessing Regan MacNeil. Fr. Karras represents what screenwriter Blatty saw as the state of modern Christians (and especially Catholics) in the early 1970s: he may not have abandoned faith in God, but he lives his life without letting God affect it much.
This begins to change when he encounters Regan, a demoniac whose condition is inexplicable. After his meeting with her, we see Fr. Karras consecrating the Eucharist at Mass, and the camera lingers on the Host and Chalice. If the Devil is real and actively moving through the world, why cannot Christ be doing the same? He recommends that Regan be given an exorcism and is partnered with his dramatic foil, Fr. Merrin (Max Von Sydow), an older, more experienced priest who will lead the exorcism.
During the exorcism it is clear that Fr. Karras is petrified by what he is seeing and Fr. Merrin, though cognizant of the evil in front of him, is calm and authoritative when dealing with the demon. It might be wrong to say Fr. Merrin has no fear, but his confidence in the power of Christ causes him to be unshakable in his fight against evil. Fr. Karras slowly regains his faith in this power, becoming more and more active in the exorcism even though still struggling with aspects of this strange new world he has wandered into.
Early in the film shock treatment is discussed as a possible cure for Regan, and Blatty used the phrase again in his underrated 1980 film The Ninth Configuration. In that film, Col. Hudson Kane sees shock as a possible cure for Capt. Billy Cutshaw’s unbelief in God. I think that Blatty, a belligerently sincere Catholic, envisioned The Exorcist as a “shock treatment” of sorts for the complacent American, a film so utterly horrifying (and based on a true story, no less) that film-goers would, like Fr. Karras, be forced to confront the reality of evil and from there be spurred on to the reality of Christ.
Unfortunately, it was far easier for the American public to treat The Exorcist as a fantasy, the progenitor of a new brand of demonic horror films that serve to sanitize Satan rather than present him as all too real. Thus the narrative arose that The Exorcist was “the scariest film of all time!” and our culture was more than happy to treat it as a horror classic rather than a meditation on the mystery of faith and the searing reality of Good and Evil. It would seem that Blatty and Friedkin failed in their mission to shock Americans back into serious consideration of God and His role in their lives.
Which brings me back to the beginning: I did not find this film to be “the scariest film of all time!” And I think that our wider culture’s acceptance of this title is a symptom of the very crisis of faith portrayed in the film. I, like Fr. Merrin, have faith in Christ, and so the ultimate triumph of Good over Evil resonates more with me than the terror of a floating girl or projectile vomit. My faith in Christ inoculates me (and, I suspect, many other Catholic viewers) against the horror of the demonic and left me confident in the ultimate triumph of Good. The spiritual battle was won, even if there were some physical casualties along the way. The wider culture, by contrast, is closer in its view of faith to Fr. Karras, and so is terrified by the power of the demon because they know no higher power. Even some of our fellow Catholics have fallen into the trap of focusing on and being overly frightened by demonic power without remembering that the Lamb has overcome. Our faith is in Christ resurrected, and with Him on our side we need not fear anything.
We don’t even have to be scared when watching The Exorcist.
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B. Alan Orange, “William Friedkin Revisits To Live and Die in L.A. on Blu-ray [Exclusive]”, 2010. https://movieweb.com/exclusive-william-friedkin-revisits-to-live-and-die-in-l-a-on-blu-ray/ Warning: considerable expletive use in this interview.
Always a good time when there is a link to a Friedkin interview!
Great review. The film captures the spirit of the book, that being “he’s wants us to despair”, just a relentless nightmare where people from all walks of life must come to together to fight that fear.