Exorcist: The Beginning

by Ed Owens

Exorcist: The Beginning doesn't really start at the beginning, as evidenced by a series of flashbacks to Mr. Merrin's (Stellan Skarsgård) experiences in Nazi Germany (sidenote: can we please find another symbol for evil? Seeing Nazis show up in nearly every film as the root cause of all things bad is getting pretty tiresome). Instead, it chooses as its starting point the assigment of Merrin, now a traveling archaeologist, to a digsite in Nairobi. There, in the middle of the desert, workers have uncovered what appears to be a church in pristine condition, buried as soon as it was built, and erected more than 500 years before the birth of Christ.

Weirdness ensues.

The troubled production history of Exorcist: The Beginning is enough to make one believe in the devil, or at least a devil. It was originally shot with Paul Schrader at the helm; then the studio decided to reshoot the majority of the film with Renny Harlin, bringing in a couple of script medics to do triage on the screenplay. Whether or not Schrader's version is better or worse remains to be seen, but Harlin's version is less than heavenly. Despite some nice atmosphere in the beginning, Harlin's film unwinds rather than builds, until all that's left is a tangled mess.

Narratively, Exorcist: The Beginning lurches along like a member of the undead, feeling so episodic at times that you wonder if the events are in any way connected (one horrific scene featuring the death of a young child is witnessed by Merrin and the boy's father, only to disappear immediately afterwards, mentioned only in passing by the priest assigned to accompany Merrin to Nairobi). The script relies a bit too heavily on the kind of trite "mystical" dialogue one would expect, and frequently chooses not to explain things -- not out of a sense of mystery, but, I suspect, because the screenwriters don't even understand it. This disconnect results in a number of "cheats" wherein the movie moves clearly and decisively towards what would seem an inevitable conclusion only to change course suddenly at the expense of internal logic. Sleight-of-hand is one thing, but Exorcist: The Beginning never even bothers to hide the magic moment.

Even more damning is the fact that despite 31 years of progress, the special effects are in some cases worse than in the original. Skarsgård spends several scenes swatting away swarms of obviously CGI flies, and one scene features a pack of hyenas that only look a hair more realistic than they did in The Lion King. This wouldn't be so bad in and of itself, except that it repeatedly breaks whatever tension the film has managed to build, grinding the suspense to a screeching halt while we marvel at just how bad the effects are. All of this culminates in one of the most indescribably silly climaxes of recent years, one that had the audience I was with laughing more than gasping.

Perhaps the zeitgeist has changed; perhaps movie-goers are more jaded now. Whatever the reason, Exorcist: The Beginning is less terrifying than frustrating, less scary than silly. After three decades, two sequels, and now a prequel, let's hope this is one series the studios won't keep trying to resurrect.