The Exorcist: A Battle of Good Against Evil by tomd

A 1973 thriller that captured the interests and imaginations of film viewers around the globe. Set within the context of the Maryland urban climate of Catholic Georgetown University, the plot revolves around a young uncharacteristically delightful and charming twelve year old, named Regan and her demonic possession after she delves into the spiritual world by her playful experiences with a Ouija Board game. The film is both spell bounding and horrific creating within the viewing audience a sense of wonderment and fascination at a possible world beyond the grave inhabited by devils and daemons that seek a human body to inhabit and cause havoc and harm to those they possess. Noel Carroll would most likely not place this film in the genre of a true horror classic, nor would he say that it evoke an emotion of "art horror."

Highlighting Carroll's recipe for horror, that requires a monster to consist of the most grotesque kind, fearsome, powerful, utterly disgusting and repulsive nature beyond scientific empiricism, Regan does not fit the bill. Moreover Regan's possessed fission character does not elicit the kind of response from the characters in the film or the audience (me) that showed that kind of fear and repulsiveness that would be required in a truly "art-horror" emotion. I did not experience those sensations of muscular contractions, tension, cringing, shrinking, shuddering, recoiling etc. emotions that true fear would generate; in fact I felt quite safe as the characters seemed to be. More in line with Psycho, this film keeps the attention of the viewing audience by holding in suspense while the "fabula" of the narrative slowly unwinds with the erotetic questions seeking answers by the bewildered scientific medical establishment and the archaic past of the Catholic Church which has thrown out such belief's in daemonic possession with the Age of Enlightenment and Reason.

The plot involves the use of the "Complex Discovery Plot" where the fabula consists of the onset, discovery, confirmation and confrontation stages of development. The onset stage introduced the characters and the ambiance to the audience showing them in their natural setting and only slowly do the events unfold that creates a sense that something unnatural has possessed Regan. Her previously polite and engaging personality begins to suffer decay replaced by a demanding, uncontrollable, dirty mouth, insensitive psychotic personality. The onset moves to the discovery stage as all medical tests fail to reveal any physiological maladies to explain Regan's behavior changes. The Church's Jesuit psychiatrist does not want to accept any preternatural explanation and does not want to explore the need for an exorcism without adequate proof of daemonic possession. The confirmation stage results from the priest psychiatrist views first hand Regan's inhabited spirits and reluctantly confirms the very real possibility of daemonic possession to his Bishop. The confrontation stage begins with the arrival of an elderly, but experienced exorcist, who with the assistance of the priest psychiatrist perform the Roman Rite of Exorcism. In this confrontation scene the elderly priest succumbs to a heart attack, a condition he already had, and the death of the psychiatrist priest who threw himself out the window after the daemon(s) left Regan and entering into him. I was left with the impression that when the human form died so too did the daemons. Regan was released from the throws of the daemons and returns to normal. In the end good wins out over evil, but the price that is paid is in self-sacrifice, in this case the priest who willingly invited the daemons to leave Regan and enter him and then throw himself out the window to die.

This film could easily fit into Cynthia Freeland's account of "art-dread" type of fiction. Freeland considers, with Aristotle, that horror movies of mood and atmosphere are interesting for how they treat moral struggles with evil. Dread, Freeland insists, involves a threat that is not only unidentified and powerful but also unnerving and evil, yet not well-defined or well understood. Dread is more like a gut response to things that are deeply unnerving for no clear reason. She suggests that art-dread offers imaginative and plausible encounters with evil and cosmic amoralities, and they help us ponder and respond emotionally to natural and deep worries about the nature of the world. In this case what is unknown captures our attention and our imagination drifts to what may lie beyond the visible world.

If anything can be gained from the human standpoint is that of providing hope. In that I mean that whatever man may encounter in this life he is not alone and that good does win out over evil, with the caveat that sacrifice has a part to play in its destruction. The audience is left with a sense of a "fantastic marvelous" outcome but offers throughout an question as to its moral probability. I felt somewhat assured of the outcome since the Church was acting in opposition to the evil elements and expected a moral/likely outcome. I felt too that it fit well into the suspenseful genre without the object of the monster.