young girl, dead. A priest claims she was possessed by the devil. The prosecution believe the girl was mentally ill and the priest negligent of her medical needs. And that’s it. The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a lean piece of work, a truly brazen piece of storytelling. After no time at all, the film becomes an open debate over the existence of the spiritual. As a genre piece, a court room drama, the audience naturally side with the righteous. However, we cannot build a case, gather clues, or form a logical argument, as we are able to do in films such as Sidney Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men or The Verdict. Instead, this esoteric defence asks us to consider whether, beyond any reasonable doubt, we can say that God does not exist. It’s a good trick, and in the best sense, an effectively manipulative one.

The performances are precise, in particular Campbell Scott’s Methodist prosecutor Ethan Thomas, a meticulous and self-confessed ‘believer’ who stands only for objective reason. Scott’s presence conjures up memories of his father’s insidious showboating in Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder. For the defence, Laura Linney’s impressionable Erin Bruner would be eaten alive by the ravenous George C.. In this movie however, she is given a reprieve, a punitive symbol of faith and emotion. And the battle commences, Campbell Scott mechanically tearing holes in the insanely ridiculous arguments of the defence, while Linney gambles on appealing to the latent spiritual sympathies of the jury (and audience).

It’s hard to identify what is so rewarding about well-played courtroom drama. Perhaps it is the liberating opportunity to freeze time, to unfold the various outcomes of a single decision. In Derrikson’s film, God really does seem to be in the details. The BBC’s recent deconstruction of the Michael Peterson murder trial, Death on the Staircase, displayed that, under the microscope, the smallest shifts in circumstance can be thrilling. In the courtroom, a space restrictively bound by rule and tradition (both social and cinematic), slight events are intensely magnified. When coupled with the unusually candid religious debate, the film is gripping, despite its generic weaknesses.


The film’s neat, economic flashback structure recalls an earlier, more confident period of Hollywood filmmaking. Rather like the ingenious Under Suspicion, the flashbacks are revisited, deconstructed, and re-presented to the audience with slight but crucial variation. This is a compelling technique that layers the storytelling with an unreliable vulnerability. It is arresting to witness religious argument in the context of the courtroom. It asks us to go with it, to believe, and it’s hard to refuse. Tom Wilkinson’s open, unmannered approach to the role of Father Moore has much to do with this. He presents his case, fully aware of how incredulous it appears.

Many of the film’s other elements are plausibly executed. There are a few particularly effective shocks from Derrikson (the man who brought us Hellraiser V). However, the film is far more comfortable as a comment on spirituality and its own fictionality than it is as a straight-laced horror film. The pointless use of CGI and the ropey chiller music (the one that sounds like mice running backwards) is silly and a little patronising. Do these things still strike fear into anybody? Surely the gory reality of the evening news has completely nullified these tame shock effects. The film’s strengths lie elsewhere. Emily Rose seems to tap into a prevalent anxiety. Other recent, successful horror films such as Land of the Dead, Red Eye, and Flightplan also focus on ‘the enemy within’ and being defenceless against and infiltrated by a covert force. In particular Romero’s Dead films share with Emily Rose the dread toward an enemy that scatters, unweakened when attacked. The war against terror has had an unusual affect on the horror film—urging it into our homes, our beds, under our skin, more personal and connected with our real lives.

Making a film about exorcism is like trying to make a film about a wolf on a basketball team: it leads to unfavourable comparisons. However, The Exorcism of Emily Rose does well to avoid too many parallels with The Exorcist. I’ve always seen Friedkin’s film as a kind of demonic sports movie. A team of spiritual athletes—the rookie and the old pro—prepare a climactic bout with an old foe. If The Exorcist is indeed a form of sports movie, then Emily Rose is the post-game analysis, and it works well as such. Certainly, as an alternative branch from the original, it heads in a far more convincing direction than Boorman’s officially ludicrous official sequel.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose is by no means a classic, merely an interesting film, well told.