If there actually is--as has been rumored for years--an Exorcist curse, it's struck again, and not just in terms of the notoriously troubled making of this prequel to the 1973 horror classic, which involved the death of one director, the shelving of a second's near-completed picture, and a serious on-set injury to the third (Renny Harlin). No, the curse definitely extends to the final product--a grimly goofy, tediously bloody, trashing of William Friedkin's still darkly frightening original. What passes for a plot here has the younger Father Merrin, played by Stellan SkarsgDrd, confronting the demon Pazuzu for the first time in the buried ruins of a Byzantine church in East Africa, with the twist--such as it is--being that the priest is suffering a crisis of faith resulting from his experiences as a pastor in Nazi-occupied Holland. SkarsgDrd is actually quite good, but the movie itself is a hash of silly history, bad theology, and ineffectual scare tactics, no better at recapturing the mood or impact of Friedkin's film than John Boorman's hilariously awful Exorcist II (1977) or author William Peter Blatty's earnest but dull Exorcist III (1990). For fans of the original, this misfire can only seem a rip-off, and even by the lax standards of today's supernatural horror genre, it's still pretty lame. Not recommended. [Note: Available in widescreen or full screen versions, DVD extras include audio commentary by director Renny Harlin, an eight-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, and text cast and crew bios and filmographies. Bottom line: an unimpressive extras package for an unimpressive film.] (F. Swietek)
Exorcist: The Beginning
Warner, 113 min., R, VHS: $58.98, DVD: $27.95, Mar. 1 Volume 20, Issue 2
Exorcist: The Beginning
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