| Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: December 26, 1973 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
18
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Rarely do movies affect us so deeply. The first time I saw Cries and Whispers, I found myself shrinking down in my seat, somehow trying to escape from the implications of Bergman’s story. The Exorcist also has that effect--but we’re not escaping from Friedkin’s implications, we’re shrinking back from the direct emotional experience he’s attacking us with. This movie doesn’t rest on the screen; it’s a frontal assault.
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This jolting tale of a 12-year-old girl possessed by the devil, her desperate movie actress mother and the two priests called in to exorcise the demon, actually seems a deeper movie now -- more intense, less formulaic or shallow. Yet it's also retained all its original hypnotic narrative grip. [2000 re-release]
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Director William Friedkin, with his scrupulous attention to detail, his determination to convey a sense of realism, achieves such startling effects that one comes away almost completely convinced of the possibility of demonic possession. His movie rushes headlong towards a blood-curling climax (the actual rite of exorcism), a series of scenes so powerful it leaves the audience limp and exhausted.
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Working from Blatty's own screenplay, director William Friedkin sets his own unhurried pace. That pace, at times, does seem a tad glacial, and that is the film's biggest failing. But unlike so many horror flicks that followed, this one really is about something. It's about several things, actually: coming of age and letting go, mainly, as well as getting sick and growing old. [2000 re-release]
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The Exorcist's strength is that it places character development on the same level as the horror elements, but it is not a ground-breaking motion picture. It is also too long, with a setup that could have accomplished the job with equal effectiveness in about 2/3 the time. [2000 re-release]
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In both its original 1973 version and its expanded 2000 edition, this hugely popular horror yarn is less a cleverly spun story than a disjointed collection of shockeroos, surrounding a few ghoulishly effective moments with overcooked plot twists and in-your-face vulgarity. [2000 re-release]
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The care that Mr. Friedkin and Mr. Blatty have taken with the physical production, and with the rhythm of the narrative, which achieves a certain momentum through a lot of fancy, splintery crosscutting, is obviously intended to persuade us to suspend belief. But to what end? To marvel at the extent to which audiences will go to escape boredom by shock and insult.
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The movie is vile and brutalizing. Indeed, in many ways it is worse than the book. If The Exorcist had been invested with any real intelligence or passion, if it had wanted to do something other than promote a few shivers, the explicitness would never have mattered. As used here, the explicitness amounts to not much more than a shill, a come-on.
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