THE EXORCISM

The Exorcism fails at being both a terrifying horror movie or intriguing character study, instead playing out cliches with no style in cheap attempts to scare the audience, wasting the talent of everyone involved and creating one of the most boring films of the year.

The film being made within The Exorcism is described as a “psychological character study within a horror movie”, and that is exactly what The Exorcism itself strives to be. There is a good idea at the core of the film, an actor playing a priest in an exorcism film so haunted by his past that he becomes possessed by a demonic presence during the film’s shoot. It’s an intriguing concept for a horror movie, but its execution is so poor and the script so dull that it squanders the talent of its cast and results in one of the worst films of the year so far.

The film starts with a good hook, seeing an actor walk through a set practicing his lines before being killed off screen by the film’s demonic presence. You would think it helps to set the tone for what to expect for the remainder of the film, but it does a one-eighty at that point. Enter Russell Crowe’s Anthony Miller, a struggling single father actor fresh out of rehab hoping to restart his career. His teenage daughter, who doesn’t look like a teenager at all, helps to build the paper-thin family drama at the centre of the story, which really doesn’t go anywhere at all. The film throws in some dimly lit scenes, Anthony standing in the corner in a trance mumbling, or even naked at the bottom of the apartment’s staircase to attempt to scare the audience, but none of it is remotely scary at all. Apart from one gnarly kill that kicks off the third act, any time the film tries to be scary, it instead will make your eyes roll. Never mind the stupidity of the characters, who are all working on a film about demonic possession and fail to see that Anthony is possessed by an evil spirit and instead write it off as him relapsing. Because every one who relapses contorts their bodies to an extent that they should break their back as electricity fails around them… I know it’s a horror movie so the characters aren’t supposed to be the smartest at times, but oh boy are these ones so painfully oblivious it's an annoyance to watch them at times.

Crowe used to star in some of the most critically acclaimed films back in the day with hits like Gladiator, Les Misérables, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and L.A. Confidential, and big studio films like Man of Steel, The Nice Guys and Noah. Recently, he’s been in lots of smaller films like Unhinged and Land of Bad, both of which were decent, but his performance in The Exorcism feels like rock bottom for him. For the most part, it feels like Crowe is sleep walking through the film, half committed at best and never does anything interesting with the character. When the possession takes full force in the final act, you can see glimpses of Crowe’s talent as an actor and there are moments of fun, but for the most part it feels like one of his worst performances. The rest of the cast has very little material to work with, leaving them grasping to try and bring their characters to life. David Hyde Pierce tries his best as Father Conor, even if the screenplay strong arms him into cliches; Ryan Simpkins and Chloe Bailey are fine as Lee and Blake respectively but never really have a standout moment, and Sam Worthington is so underused that I almost forgot he was in the film until his big moment.

When it comes to horror films, if the film is able to send a few good chills down my spine, I’m pretty forgiving towards it even if the rest of the film is lacking because at the end of the day, I just want a good scare. But when a horror film fails even to do that, it’s hard to hold back on the criticisms when it's poorly put together, generic and has little redeeming qualities. And sadly that is the case with Russell Crowe’s latest film The Exorcism. If you are looking for Russell Crowe as a vespa riding priest, this is not that Russell Crowe priest horror film. Instead, The Exorcism wastes its intriguing premise and filmmaking driven narrative to instead poorly recreate scares from far superior exorcism films, that when packaged with a stale screenplay and uninspired performances ranging from grasping to try and create an interesting character to just effortless acting, it makes for one of the worst films of the year.