*** Official EXORCIST: The Beginning Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Coressel]

Sure, there is no dialogue scene as painfully lame as a hung-over Burton saying to the back of Ned Beatty's head, "I once travelled this way on the wings of a demon," or a young Dana Plato asking "why are you here," to Linda Blair who matter-of-factly answers, "I used to be possessed by a demon," or an even more hung-over Burton asking James Earl Jones if he was once possessed by "the demon they call... Pazzuzzoo..." to which JEJ answers, "That's what my mamma used to tell me..."

But still... Demonic Hyenas? Possessed Butterflys?

The Beginning is almost... ALMOST... as bad as "The Heretic."

And I just can't stand E3 either. I tried to like it, but just couldn't believe how awful it was. It was as if Blatty was telling us that even he didn't get what made the original Exorcist flick so scary and powerful. But then again, this Robinson guy was the one responsible for screwing up the end of E3 and firing Schrader and hiring Harlin. So maybe if someone casts him out, we might get something worthwhile.

I'm not sure what I expected from this movie, but I sure didn't expect such a blatant display of "let's go out of our way to make a piece of shit."

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Why not? Even in the original classic, there are dogs fighting in the desert during the opening Iraq sequence as the statue of Pazuzu looms over them. I have no trouble suspending disbelief enough to accept that the powers of evil/demons can control all living creatures. Even non-living things flew about and acted up all over the place in THE EXORCIST (45 records flying, drawers opening, dressers moving...)

As for E3, I think Blatty actually did try to return to what made THE EXORCIST so scary and powerful. It didn't grab me the first time I saw it in '90, but it's appealed to me ever since upon repeated viewings.

 

[Micheal]

I loved the original and E3. This one was alright, not terrible but not great either. I doubt it will make its way into my DVD collection.

I do have a question about the ending though, spoilers abound...

At the end when the women is finally free of the possession... is it the Devil who kills her or is God freeing her.

I know the devil said that he would kill her but the priest said to the boy that she is now in Heaven...? I took it to think that God finally let her rest after everything (during the War and possession) she had been though.

Besides... the devil said the same thing about Reagan and he never got her either.

Am I crazy?

 

[Mike Graham]

I took it to be injuries she sustained during the exorcism.

 

[Micheal]

It was kind of odd the way the blood just starting gushing out of her head...? She seemed fine and then.... gush!

 

[Andres Munoz]

I'm with Mike. I think the injuries killed her.

 

[Matt Thompson]

The demon went as far as to say "The whore is mine, and I'd kill her before I let you have her!" I figure that it just started taking nice chunks out of the back of her head as it was running down the cave.

As for the whole "Ten, twelve years ago," bit, it's definitely supposed to be a different exorcism. When Schrader was shooting his film, he also said that was a different incident. Considering that Merrin never sought Church approval, it's quite likely they don't recognize what he did in 1949.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I smelled this movie's stink like a fart in a car when I heard about it for the first time. I felt it in my gut so incredibly strong that I would have bet my life itself on it folks, i'm serious about that.

To me it's futile to try to get accuracy and logic out of a product that only exsists to get our money. Their are so many things wrong with this film that I could type my fingers to the bone here.

The point of the original was COMPLETELY lost on the makers of this thing. They just made a bunch of shit up in order to come up with a story. Everything we need to know about Merrin's exploits in Africa are discussed in the original, it's not necessary to show it at all. Stellen Skarsgard did what he could, but he was like a spider being flushed down a toilet, bravely fighting it, but doomed by the swirling forces of crap around him. He deserved better.

It was TOO noisy as well. What really gets my Fruit of the Looms in a bunch with horror films these days is they just don't know when to keep silent! They have to put this shock music in when none is needed. And when the big reveal finally came of the possesed one, my friend and I just looked at each other and giggled quietly to ourselves in awe of this films audacity. If the demon was in her the whole time, it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to believe that the demon had the capacity to act as normal as she was acting throughout the film, holding quiet conversations with Merrin, standing by while discussions of Christ and the crucifix were being discussed right in from of him/her without an outburst of anger, and yes, keeping his cool while he/her was having sex with Merrin!

Finally, I just have to laugh at the thought of Morgan Creek actually believing that Renny Harlin had what it took to make REAL terror. With the exception of Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger, he's pretty much a bust with every film he does. Going from William Friedkin to William Peter Blatty to (gulp) Renny (Driven) Harlin is a quality drop the equivelant of jumping out of a passenger plane with no parachute. My stomach is sinking just typing it.

Bottom line, this film shouldn't even exsist. It's an example of the worst kind of Hollywood exploitation of a truly terrifying tale of good and evil.

BTW, I just heard that they're doing a prequel to E.T. directed by the Farrely brothers. A ridiculous notion? It makes about as much sense as this film does, just to put it in the proper perspective for you.

My advice to those who actually enjoyed this sham of a film, go back and re-watch the original and experience it's brilliance all over again...then re-examine your opinion on this travesty. I don't mean to sound pushy folks, but you may be surprised.

 

[Matt Thompson]

Care to point me to the poster who claimed The Beginning was a better film than The Exorcist? Believe it or not, it is actually possible to enjoy a sequel on its own merits, even if it doesn't live up to the reputation of the original.

 

[Andres Munoz]

John Williamson, the fact that a sequel may not be as good as the original, does not make it a bad film.

The Exorcist is a classic, the scariest movie of all time in my book (I still get chills down my spine just listening to the score and looking at a possesed Reagan's face).

But I also happened to enjoy THE BEGINNING. It's not the masterpiece that the original is but it has its own merits, so no, I was not surprised after "re-examining my opinion". I stand by it.

People have different tastes. It's a fact of life.

 

[Matt Thompson]

I watched The Exorcist last night in fact. The film is infinitely better than Harlin's prequel, but I noticed something -- I honestly believe The Beginning enhances The Exorcist. The prologue scenes in Iraq work to better effect, because we know what the miniature demon head is. And we know the shit has literally hit the fan when Merrin comes upon the Pazuzu statue, and the dogs fighting nearby.

That's all evident in the book, but not-so-much in the film because we don't know what Merrin's thinking. With The Beginning behind us, we have a pretty good idea. That, and "But thank God my will is weak!" is actually a little funnier and more charming, considering we remember Skarsgard saying it.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

It's rare that a fourth take on an original classic film, made thirty years later, can live up to - let alone surpass - its greatness, John. THE EXORCIST is a great film, and one of my all-time favorite films, ever. I know every frame of it, and don't need to see it again to know that Harlin's THE BEGINNING was still enjoyable, and way better than I ever thought it could be.

At this point in time, I can't imagine what anyone expects from a fourth Exorcist film in the year 2004. Based on all those early bogus prejudicial reviews, I expected to find nothing but endless jokes and CGI madness, and mind-numbing SFX substituting for any story or characterization; but incredibly, Renny's film turned out to be a very character-driven study, getting into the head of Father Merrin. It was nothing like all the garbage I'd falsely heard about, at least not up till the climax (which I admit was tastelessly lame and a rip off).

But you definitely sounded like you made your mind up long before the opening credits unspooled, John. The sad thing is, you were not the only one. Harlin's version was never given a truly open-minded fair chance. It's not a great movie by any means, but I enjoyed it. And it DOES set up the classic original nicely.

 

[Coressel]

It's not so much what I "expect," but rather what I HOPE could be made of such a film.

Yes, the original is amazing, and we probably shouldn't expect a prequel 30 years later to be better or equal, but for Christ's sake why CAN'T the studios raise the bar and possibly our expectations and actually make something that doesn't go out of its way to suck?

This movie was beyond bad and even beneath my expectations (whatever they were), and there's just no excuse for it.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Of course, I've already made it clear that I didn't think it was a bad movie. But I'd think the main "excuse" for it being bad is that people just didn't like the idea of Paul Schrader getting bumped off the first version, and then Warner deciding to make it more "for the masses". In other words, I believe some people are using that background information as a reason to automatically find the movie unappealing.

Let me ask you this. What else would you have preferred for an Exorcist prequel? Not to be a wisegy; I really would like to know. IMO, there aren't many places to go anymore except inside Father Merrin's mind and fears and struggles with his faith. And the Harlin version did this. Oh, perhaps not as well or as often as Schrader's version may have. We'll have to wait and see about that.

 

[Coressel]

I honestly don't know. Except maybe for it to be intelligent and scary with a strong sense of character development, rather than being yet another major miscalculation by a greedy studio executive.
I might well be biased after having followed the story about Schrader, so for now I'm looking forward to seeing Schrader's film as objectively as I can. I'm open to the possibility that I might not like it either!

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Fair enough! For what it's worth at this point, I really did think Harlin's film had character development, with regard to Merrin at least.

 

[Coressel]

I have to admit that you are right about Merrin's character development. He was allowed to develop to a point, but no more than, say, Dr. Grant in Jurassic Park and JP3. He has interesting moments which are quickly tossed aside for another velociraptor chase, then we're supposed to just as quickly forget that there are still unanswered questions and plot holes.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Well, to be honest, yes, I did go into the film fully expecting it to be bad, that's pretty clear from my post I guess. But it wasn't completely a blind jump to judgement on my part, it was the result of everything i've seen, heard, and read about the film before going in.

All hope was pretty much lost for the film to be a worthy entry in the Exorcist series for me. HOWEVER, and I want to make this clear, if the film had surprised me by being just as good as say The Ring or The Others then I would have admitted it right away, that's the type of guy I am.

But the sad thing is it wasn't even as good as those films were, it rang of commercialism. The three major things that doomed this film for me is...

1. Short sighted studio executive James Robinson being afraid to be daring here and go against the grain and make a film that attacked my intellect and subconcious, not just my eyes and ears. Attacking the senses is easy, any third rate horror film can do that, it's harder and quite frankly preferrable to attack my brain as the original and 'EIII' did.

2. Bad story. The filmmakers took the story to a literal extent that was just not appropriate for this series stature. When Reagan stated to father Karras in the original that she was the Devil himself, I never took that litterally. To me, it was just a rogue demon with delusions of granduer and only said it was the Devil to psyche out Karras and everyone else in the house. Now, in this new film, we suddenly have an actual event to point to.... This storyline is what I was referring to when I said that they were just making this stuff up to come up with a story. Good and evil have always been around, to try to turn that into a literal event and place is just, well, silly and unbelievable to me. It only serves as a device to make a movie and nothing more.

3. Wrong director. I don't think I need to go into that further.

I will say this though, the notion of a prequel is an intriguing one, if it was done right I would have been the first to praise it, even though I still believe we got all the info we needed from the first film. The Exorcist is one of my favorite films of all time, i'm not exactly thrilled about trashing one of it's sequels here, folks. It pains me to do it, but I feel that this film deserves all of it's bad press i'm sorry to say.

Finally, I DO expect an Exorcist prequel or sequel for that matter to be better than your average horror fare. A film in this particular series has some rather big shoes to fill, the filmmakers responsible for bringing us these films need to be doing it better and scarier then the other guy's. They weren't up to the task here, and this is what we ended up with.

Hope, however remains for me. We still haven't seen Shrader's version.

I would also like to apologize here for my closing line in my previous post, it was a bit heavy handed on my part.

 

[Matt Thompson]

The film never states one way or another if it's a demon or the devil. While Francis does say it's rumored Lucifer fell in that spot, remember also Merrin was sent there to look for the miniature stone head of a "mythical demon," and that the statue was definitely not of Satan. Further, the opening priest in the credits is credited as "Priest With Pazuzu."

 

[Michael Allred]

I don't have much to offer here but I finally caught this one on DVD Tuesday and was surprised to find myself enjoying it much more than I had expected. It still ranks #3 out of the 4 flicks but I still had a good time. I will also look forward to seeing Schrader's version as well.