By David Dent
Writer/Director Joshua John Miller, perhaps best known as Homer the boy vampire in Kathryn Bigelow’s 1987 movie Near Dark, is also fittingly the son of Jason Miller, who readers may recall played Father Karras in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973).
Fitting because the meta pitch of The Exorcism is a movie within a movie, about the making of a remake of Friedkin’s film (the shooting title is ‘The Georgetown Project’, referencing the Washington DC location of the original movie).
Russell Crowe plays a washed-up actor, Tony Miller, trying to make a comeback while at the same time reconnecting with estranged daughter Lee (Ryan Simpkins) following her mother’s death from cancer and his subsequent slide into booze and drugs, all washed down with memories of childhood abuse in the Catholic church. A Weinsteinish director (ironic because this is a Miramax film) wastes no opportunity reminding Miller of these facts in getting the actor to reach deep for his character; his crisis of faith and guilt over his wife’s death strongly suggest that said character is the remake’s Father Karras.
But as Miller recovers his demons, a bigger one takes him over, its origins rooted in his troubled past. It’s left to the Catholic adviser on the film (a very emaciated David Hyde Pierce) and Lee to confront whatever has taken control of the portly thespian and drive it out.
Most of the action in the film takes place in the rooms of a large, constructed house with exposed walls, which is the set for the film being shot (it even includes a fridge temperature attic room, just like the original movie, although little is made of this). It’s a clever idea, furthering the meta-ness of the concept, but the film depends on family trauma a little too much, before anything clever is abandoned in a climax which uncomfortably recalls last year’s Exorcist: Believer.
“This is a psychological drama wrapped in the skin of a horror movie” is the onscreen pitch for ‘The Georgetown Project’, the film within a film seeking to update Friedkin’s original for a modern audience. Which is kind of the problem with The Exorcism, although it’s by no means unwatchable.
The Exorcism is available now in UK cinemas.
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