SPOILER ALERT
Starting in the first thirty minutes or so into the movie, where Reagan uses a crucifix as a dildo and turns her head around to 180 degrees, my first thought was, “that was cool.”
I forgot why we even got there. We started as an anthropological documentary, with the blatant use of “Allahu Akhbar” to incite discomfort among the watchers. As I write this, I’m five minutes in on a Youtube video titled Hidden Meaning in THE EXORCIST – Earthling Cinema (I’ll put the link down below). I have paused to write this review, and the narrator starts to analyze the movie. He says that religious people were dwindling during the era this movie came out, as in lesser people are going to church. Going back to my previous point, the film tries to incite that Islam is unholy, for lack of a better term. The movie started with an excavation in Iraq and the priest finding an amulet-like item that funnily looks like the Merlion in Singapore.
The use of background noise seems to create an atmosphere of an Islamic country was annoying for the most part, but I believe it shows more than that. It shows that digging up stuff in a dessert is wrong, and we have to stop doing it. Stop the science! says the church.
Listen, I understand that I’m rambling here, and my thoughts are incoherent, but I need you to bear with me. My brain works this way; there are many interjecting thoughts at the same time. Another one of my points is that the plot doesn’t make any sense at all. The girl, Reagan, does not have any reason to become possessed by a spirit of that magnitude. She only played with a ‘Mr. Howdy’ which seems out of tangent as well, using an Ouija board. OOOOOH! Scary! But no offense to the people who like the movie. It just doesn’t add up.
Furthermore, the archaeologist priest just died with no explanation, which I can understand, cinematic effect whatnot. But then, the demon just leaped out of the girl when the shrink priest asked her to? After all that flying, shouting, and vomiting, the devil ends up listening to the priest. We can say that offering his soul to the demon was the deus ex machina because the director didn’t know how to end a two-hour-long movie with a giant plot-hole. Where did the demon come from, or better yet, was the point really to kill Karras for leaving his mother to die? Also, Burke Dennings, who the fuck was that? Ugh, I have a headache. Just watch it for suspense. It’s fun. If you can leave in the comments any explanation of what happened, that would be much appreciated. Now, I must feed my cats.
The Variables of Jums 