THE EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING
First of all, let me say, I am not blind to the problems with this 2004 Exorcist prequel: the bizarrely rendered CGI hyenas, for one, and a final 25 minutes that just goes sideways.
But the first hour and a half is brilliant, and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched this film.
The cinematography is rich and clever: images alternate between sweaty, grimy humanness and glorious, soaring religious architecture; between filthy, streaked windows and vast desert landscapes. Characters often stand alone in small pools of lamp or candlelight, surrounded by the immense, pitch dark unknown. We are continually shown that people, with their breakable bodies and minds, are insignificant in the face of the enormous and eternal battle between good and evil. They are ignorant, expendable playthings of the gods – and here, in this remote piece of Kenyan desert, the Devil is winning the game.
I particularly appreciate the fact that all this use of semi-darkness and shadows is not a ploy to avoid showing monsters or gore. When there’s gore, it’s almost lovingly lingered-upon, and the pug-nosed demon Pazuzu certainly doesn’t stick to the shadows.
Almost every scene is saturated with a sense of dread, of an awful fate approaching, with the feeling that the problem here isn’t just the presence of evil, but the absolute absence of good. Evil will always win here because it’s the place that Lucifer fell to, it’s cursed, and people just cannot leave it alone.
The story is satisfyingly disturbing, full of twists and reveals, and a jump scare that gets me every time. It’s a clever film, with a point to make about human fallibility and institutionalised evil, and the parallel drawn between Merrin’s memories of Nazi violence with his experience of the British army’s callousness towards the Kenyan Turkana people deserves an analysis all of its own.
In short: I adore the film, I hate the hyenas, I don’t want to talk about the last 25 minutes.
Robyn Fraser