“Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It has been 40 years since my last confession. I had a drinking problem, and that became a drug problem, and I ruined my life … There’s this thing that has come up. It’s a job, and it’s coming to me off the back of someone else’s tragedy. But maybe work will be good for me, you know? Give me a sense of purpose. Make me stronger. Maybe make my daughter proud of me.”
It’s the confession of a desperate man, and that’s the center of The Exorcism. This year there’s a new Gladiator film out, but Russell Crowe isn’t going to be fighting again in the arenas of ancient Rome any time soon. Instead he has been spending some time lately doing battle with Satan himself and some of his minions. The Exorcism was actually his first tour of duty in the genre. That film actually wrapped in 2019 but took nearly five years to make it to the box office, were it came and went with little more than a whimper. Later Crowe also starred in The Pope’s Exorcist, where he played the top exorcism man in the Vatican. The crazy thing is that film came first, so to most people it looked like The Exorcism was just a cheap redo. That doesn’t mean, of course, that this isn’t a kind of redo. It is, and no one is really hiding the fact. You’ll understand in a minute.
“I call out…Moloch. Begone Serpent…then… she barfs. She screams. And I die. The end. Piece of cake.”
Russell Crowe plays Anthony Miller, who is a washed up actor. He’s washed up because of all of those things he confessed to above. His wife died, and he checked out of the world, including the life of his daughter, Lee (Simpkins). Now he has a chance to redeem himself when he is cast in the film The Georgetown Project. As you might have already guessed and the cast and crew gleefully admit, this is a retelling of The Exorcist, with Miller cast to play the role of Father Karras, played by Jason Miller. It just so happens that Jason Miller’s real-life son, Joshua John Miller, is the director of The Exorcism and plays a small role in the film. Also, Georgetown is the place where the first film takes place. So we get all of those connections to The Exorcist out of the way early.
The director, played by Adam Goldberg, fights to cast Miller in the part, and it almost immediately backfires. He’s pretty much blowing his scenes, and it doesn’t help that he does so in in front of Lee, who gets a job as a PA on the film. He gets back to the bottle and all of his old demons come back to nest … except this time one more demon has come along for the ride. Things start getting spooky on the set as the director tries to salvage his film. There are a lot of unexplained power surges and accidents on the set. Eventually it becomes obvious that Anthony Miller isn’t home.
Enter Father Conor, played brilliantly by Frasier’s brother, David Hyde Pierce. He’s on set as the technical consultant and shares a lot in common with old Father Karras. He’s also a trained psychologist, and he starts to try and treat Miller’s affliction until it becomes obvious even to him that this is a real case of possession. Many of the events mirror those from The Exorcist, as Father Conor’s solution has a lot in common with that of the original film. The climax starts with what art first appears to be an exorcism of Miller, who’s doing all the crazy body manifestations now, but it turns into something else, and I found it rather clever and a nice take on the genre. It certainly beats anything that happened in the recent Exorcist revival over at Blumhouse and turns into a better film than The Pope’s Exorcism, by far.
“Are you forgetting what kind of movie we’re making?” Everything works here. They get around the entire trying-to-be-The Exorcist thing in a clever way, and the acting here is really pretty good. Both Crowe and Pierce are fantastic, and the climax chemistry and energy are pretty sweet. The film is certainly compelling and one of the better exorcism films to come out in decades. Look; everyone has been trying to catch lightening in a bottle that was The Exorcist for over 50 years. It still hasn’t happened and likely never will. This film doesn’t come close. But it does come closer than most and deserves more attention than it got at the box office. It’s out on Blu-ray and worth a pretty good look. “It could happen again.”
