‘Exorcist’ prequel not as devilish as you’d think

JIM ERWIN

Sitting in a sold out theater watching a horror movie is as much fun

as riding a roller coaster. The people around you scream, gasp and

say embarrassing things without realizing what they are doing.

About halfway into “Exorcist: The Beginning,” I heard someone a

few rows back nervously mumble, “I don’t know if I want to see this

movie anymore.” And if that’s not fun, tell me what is.

“Exorcist: The Beginning” is a prequel to the 1973 Academy

Award-winning “The Exorcist,” by William Friedkin. This new movie

isn’t a brilliant piece of cinema like the original, but it’s

enjoyable. It’s definitely not a laughable mess, like “Exorcist II:

The Heretic,” starring Richard Burton.

The photography is nice, the characters are compelling and

director Renny Harlin is committed to telling his story his own way.

For the most part, he takes his time and insists that you get to know

the characters, peppering you all the while with enough scares to

keep you off balance. Most of the terror is psychological and the

script is thoughtfully assembled. I particularly like how the

godlessness of war, as a tool of the Devil, is a subtly woven theme

that no one states outright.

In the original, Linda Blair played a little girl named Regan

MacNeil who’s possessed by the devil and pukes up pea soup at a

Catholic priest named Father Damien Karras. In the movie’s climax, an

older priest named Father Lankester Merrin comes in to perform the

exorcism ritual and cast the devil out of Regan. Father Merrin was

chosen as the lead exorcist because he’d had prior experience

performing an exorcism on a young boy in Africa. “Exorcist: The

Beginning” is the story of that exorcism. There are few places where

it’s disconnected from what the original movie said about Merrin’s

first exorcism, but who cares? This is a different movie.

When we meet Merrin (Stellan Skarsgard), he’s an archeologist and

a fallen priest. The horrors he experienced in World War II made him

lose his faith and give up his calling. He’s asked to participate in

a dig in East Africa, where a buried church has been discovered.

The iconography inside the church is unusual and haunting, but

what’s really peculiar is how the church has been defiled despite

being completely sealed underground. As Merrin investigates the

church, really bad things start happening in the nearby village. A

young boy gets sick and the local missionary doctor named Sarah

(Izabella Scorupco) can’t make him better. The local villagers blame

the archeologists for digging up something evil. Like a box of

take-out that’s been in the fridge for too long, exploring the

contents of the church just stirs up more stuff they don’t want to

disturb.

The biggest problem with “Exorcist: The Beginning” is that its

peak moment, the exorcism, isn’t the scariest part of the movie. This

is the one place where Harlin doesn’t have anything new or original

to say. It’s a terrific shame, because the rest of this movie is so

good.

The action here seems rushed and there’s nothing really shocking.

The Devil isn’t as vile, corrupt, degrading and soulless as he should

be. He doesn’t shout anything that most members of the audience

haven’t said or heard before. This scene just isn’t as scary as it

should be. The computer generated images help a little, but there’s

nothing here to make anyone faint or hurl their guts. Really, it just

looks like a pretty lame imitation of the original movie’s exorcism.

On the other hand, this movie offers plenty of scares. Skarsgard

is a likable Merrin and it’s easy to empathize with his confusion as

he tries to rationalize supernatural occurrences. He’s someone who

isn’t in denial, but is just resigned to live in a world without

faith. It becomes increasingly difficult for him to remain faithless

when the Devil keeps tapping him on the shoulder saying “peek-a-boo.”

Scorupco’s missionary doctor Sarah helps flesh out Merrin and

makes all of the characters around her feel more human. Scorupco also

played the dragon slayer Alex in “Reign of Fire,” another movie where

her understated supporting character put life into the rest of the

cast. One of the things I like about her in this movie is that her

character doesn’t have a hidden stash of make-up somewhere. She’s not

afraid to look like a woman who’s been living away from western

civilization for quite a while, but still wants to be feminine.

One of the most interesting stories about “Exorcist: The

Beginning,” is that the studio, Morgan Creek, has a completely

different version of this movie sitting in storage. Before hiring

Harlin, Morgan Creek hired director Paul Schrader, who completed a

final cut of his version of the movie. Morgan Creek shelved it

because they thought it wasn’t scary enough.

The version in the theaters now, Harlin’s version, is a completely

different movie with a different script. The Schrader version may get

released sometime this fall, or may be made available as bonus disk

in the DVD.

If you’re a fan of this kind of horror, it’s worth checking out

“Exorcist: The Beginning,” while it’s in the theaters. The two

Exorcist sequels were truly awful movies, but this prequel isn’t

possessed by the bad scripts that plagued both of those movies.

* JIM ERWIN, 40, is a technical writer and computer trainer.

Open season declared on ‘Open Water’

We have apparently reached a point in modern cinema where any film

that is the least bit unconventional can receive positive reviews.

That is the only explanation I have for why a boring, amateurish and

improbable film like “Open Water” garnered good reviews from more

than 70% of the national film critics.

If you’ve seen the trailers for “Open Water,” you already know the

premise. Basically, a young yuppie couple on vacation in the tropics

is stranded at sea during a scuba diving trip when the boat they

hired, along with 18 other tourists, leaves without them. To buy how

this occurs takes a leap of faith I couldn’t make, but it might scare

you off adventure sports charters for the rest of your life.

The single paragraph above describes virtually the whole film. The

attractive young couple Susan (Blanchard Ryan) and Daniel (Daniel

Travis) must contend with everything you would expect of their

predicament, including exposure, hunger, hypothermia and of course,

sharks. Add in them hashing out their extremely uninteresting

relationship in the process, and you have one of the least engaging

plots in recent memory.

To add to the audience’s misery, “Open Water” was shot with a

digital camera, and what could have been beautiful scenery looks dark

and muddy with muted colors. This is a low budget film in the worst

sense, because every frame shouts that fact from the screen. In a

lame attempt to be “artsy,” the film unsuccessfully juxtaposes the

couple’s plight with the carefree passengers back on land.

Thankfully, young children will be spared from seeing this garbage

as “Open Water” is rated “R.” This rating is due to obscene language

and a completely gratuitous full frontal nude scene.

“Open Water” is supposedly based on a true event, the

disappearance of Eileen and Tom Lonergan off the Great Barrier Reef

in Australia in 1998. As with any disaster with no survivors -- such

as that depicted in “The Perfect Storm” -- dialogue and events need

to be fabricated. While it’s not surprising people have died under

these circumstances, the based-on-a-true-event angle does not excuse

bad filmmaking or storytelling.

I’m tempted to say I’d rather swim with sharks than see “Open

Water,” but I suppose that is going a bit far, even for this film. I

was so disgusted with shelling out good money to see this woeful

effort, I did something I haven’t done since high school. Namely, I

snuck into an adjoining theater to see another movie to justify the

price of admission.

* VAN NOVACK, 50, is the director of institutional research at Cal

State Long Beach and lives in Huntington Beach with his wife

Elizabeth.