Director Joshua John Miller and M.A. Fortin's script has a few interesting ideas but it takes far too long to find its identity. And even when it does, it's still no great shakes.
That William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973), one of the most seminal exercises in filmmaking, was a cursed product is a legend whispered among cineastes all over the world. The eeriness and the sinister energy that permeates the subject matter of the film is widely rumoured to have oozed out onto the sets during the shooting, with reports of countless strange occurrences going on to capture the imagination of the general public. The same speculations have nevertheless perpetuated the film’s iconic status and about 51 years after its maiden release, a new Hollywood film attempts to reimagine the behind-the-scenes events from an entirely different perspective.
The Exorcism, the film in question, stars Russell Crowe in the lead and is co-written and directed by Joshua John Miller, the son of The Exorcist cast member Jason Miller, who plays Father Karras. Crowe plays Anthony Miller, a once Hollywood darling who is now down and out on luck, opportunity and a happy familial life following his dark encounters with alcoholism and substance abuse. A ray of hope strikes finally when a filmmaker insists on him making a comeback and playing the role of priest in the exorcism film The Georgetown Project, which bears strong resemblance to, you guessed it — The Exorcist.
Joshua Jason Miller evidently draws from personal accounts of his father’s experiences on Friedkin's sets to weave the tale. The meta-movie structure serves him well in lending a new vantage point and viewing the extraordinary events from afar. Aside from his protagonist, Anthony 'Tony' Miller, sharing not just his father’s surname but also the problem of alcohol addiction, The Exorcism also employs a fictional version of Joshua Miller himself in the form of Tony Miller’s daughter Lee.
The father-daughter dynamic
As much as the film is about fear, faith and boundaries of human experience, the father-daughter dynamic, too, features as a strong undercurrent in the narrative. Tony Miller is currently down in the dumps and has hit the bottle quite furiously, nursing both his past trauma (as a molestation victim when he was an altar boy) and the more recent one of his wife's passing. His daughter Lee, on the other hand, is an introverted outlier who has just been suspended from school, and her equation with her dad is quite thin and tenuous on its own. For Joshua Miller, the thrill lies in seeing them reconcile and face up to their respective demons but not without enduring a remarkably tumultuous and bizarre journey together. But the same thrill he seeks doesn’t really translate into a well-rounded film.
At the idea level, The Exorcism is novel in combining a tender relationship drama with a study of a frenetic psychological decline. It's envisioned as a psychological drama wrapped in the skin of horror, to quote actor Adam Goldberg (in the role of Peter, the director of The Georgetown Project), and some of the early scenes of the film do well in establishing Tony’s character as this conflicted and broken man; and Russell Crowe is particularly charming in these portions. His repartee with Lee and later with his on-screen director Peter reveal a lot about who he is and the emotional baggage he carries but all that information doesn’t amount to much because the story around him is yet to find its identity.
Much of the runtime is then spent on setting the mood. Simon Duggan'’s cinematography mostly comprises hyper-steady and slow shots of all the various locations intended to invoke a gloomy atmosphere. Dark corners, fluttering lights, highly muted colours and bland expressions on actors’ faces, too, are part of the visual palette with the film’s soundscape attempting to manipulate is further. The dialogues feel awfully muffled whereas the exaggerated diegetic sounds provide the jump scares which, unfortunately, can be spotted from a distance.
Despite Russell Crowe’s spirited performance in which he lurches, contorts and goes through absolute physical hell (with terribly dark undereye circles, the palest skin and whatnot) to give Linda Blair a proper run for her money, all we are left with to savour are a measly few decent scenes that could belong to any other film. Ryan Simpkins does well in switching from a devil-may-care personality to a devil-does-care one with good ease but her arc is dealt with a bit of haste and indecisiveness.
From her wanting to figure out her dad — this enigmatic, partly narcissistic Hollywood guy — to eventually finding solace and romance in his main co-star Blake Holloway (fascinatingly, Blake, played by Chloe Bailey is the girl Miller tries to exorcise in the meta-movie), Simpkins’ Lee gets a lot of material to delve into. But the film squanders almost every single angle as it returns time and again to a drabby, inconsequential scary scene. David Hyde Pierce as Father Conor, who shows up as the film consultant — both arcane and catholic, puts on a solid show in the little that he gets to do, particularly in the all-important climax sequence. Sam Rockwell, the Avatar boy, simply wonders for most parts what he is meant to do.
The horror genre is incomplete without its cliches and tropes and technology has helped filmmakers push the envelope, but only when employed sincerely. With The Exorcism, the sound and the visual design don’t underline the emotion but become the film’s saving grace. As far as the script is concerned, aside from creating a protagonist that merits our empathy, Joshua John Miller and M.A. Fortin find themselves completely at sea in deciding just what they want to do here: to make a self-referential film about the ominosity that surrounds the genre as a whole? Or cheekily bring to light the horrors and the ominosity of fame and stardom? Well, before they could figure any of that out, it is possible you are already seeing the end credits rolling up.
