diggstown70001's Full Review: Exorcist: The Beginning
“EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING” REVIEW
NOTE: There are some mild spoilers in this review, but in no way is the ending revealed.
I really, really, liked this movie. “Exorcist: The Beginning” (directed by Renny Harlin) effectively captures the essence of the original Exorcist: creepy, engaging, and totally scary. The special effects are better than the first movie, of course, and the sprinkle of CGI thrown in is believable and adds nicely to the film. Great sets and locations add much realism.
In the beginning we find a priest walking through vast lands of dead people, 1500 years ago from the time the rest of the movie takes place in (late 1940s). He finds one child alive clutching the Pazuzu head figurine (the one Merrin finds at the beginning of Exorcist I); the priest tries to take it from the child’s hand but he suddenly awakes and grasps it back into his hand. The camera pulls back and we see a whole valley of dead people, which is quite an amazing scene in itself.
Next we are taken to Cairo, Egypt in the late forties, where we find Mr. Lancaster Merrin. Formerly a priest, he has now taken up archeology because he wanted to study something he could actually put his hands on, and for other reasons disturbingly foreshadowed throughout the movie. Stellan Skarsgard, who plays Lancaster Merrin, hits his role right on the mark as the jaded, half Indiana Jones, half priest archeaologist.
He is approached by a British man who wants to hire him to investigate a church found in Kenya, Africa. The church is entirely buried and is being dug up. A church that was built 1000 years before Christianity was brought to Africa. It is in pristine condition, like it had been buried the day it was built. The man says the workers there won't go into the church, for fear of bad spirits. Marin declines when the man presents money on the table, but then the man pulls out a cloth with the Pazuzu head impressed in it and shows it to Merrin.
Marin finally decides to go check out the church, and in the church they find a Jesus on the cross that had been ripped from the ground, and suspended by chains upside down. He dismisses this as vandalism, and determines that the room could have been a sacrificial chamber of some sort, but who were these people sacrificing to?
At the dig site Merrin meets a female doctor (Izabella Scorupco, another stellar performance), and she tells him of strange occurrences around the site. While Merrin is there a man begins shaking and foaming at the mouth uncontrollably while at work. She claims it to be a seizure, heat exhaustion. But obviously something else is going on.
All I will say about the exorcism is this: about ¾ into the movie there is a twist that left the audience gasping in shock. I was truly creepified.
There is of course a lot of the demonic happenings: clocks stopping, beds shaking, windows and doors opening or slamming shut for no apparent reason, the ever present Pazuzu head. Those involved have terrifying nightmares. When they finally confront each other Pazuzu gets into Merrin's head about the horrors he encountered in WWII, and what made him quit the priesthood.
There was a lot of gore of course, but there were always a good balance of scenes that didn't show everything, scenes that let the audience finish them with their imagination. Acting was great, characters were totally believable. Top notch directing and editing achieves at hinting to the evil that was apparent the dig site, but also not giving you too much information to the point where you know what's going to happen next. I was on the edge of my seat most of the time, and I don’t scare easily.
Go see this film, if you think you can handle it! If you had problems sitting through the first one, then this one won’t be any easier.
When Father Lankester Merrin arrived to expunge a troublesome demon from Regan MacNeil in the original EXORCIST movie many viewers were left cowering ...More at Family Video
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.