I don’t know about you, but to me it seems like any attempt to sequelize William Friedkin’s seminal horror titan is destined to be as cursed as the body of little Regan McNeil herself.
The first attempt – helmed by John Boorman, no less – is widely regarded as one of the worst sequels ever made, while a belated third entry, lensed by original Exorcist author William Peter Blatty, is actually pretty damn good, but was tinkered with by an uncertain studio and unceremoniously sank without a trace at the box office.
However, by the time the 2000s came around, some bright spark at Morgan Creek figured it was high time to give the devil one more due and commissioned a prequel that would deal with Father Lankaster Merrin’s first brush with the demon Puzazu and would be directed by Paul Schrader. And it was… and then it wasn’t.
Deemed unscary by execs, Schrader was eventually fired, his finished film scrapped and Renny Harlin – yes, that Renny Harlin – was brought in to start again with a whole new script and – Stellen Skarsgärd aside – a whole new cast. Talk about development hell…
In 1940’s Cairo we find a younger, burnt out, Father Lankester Merrin languishing in a dive bar after turning to archeology full time due to a lack of faith. His shaken belief stems from something that happened to him back in the Nazi occupied Netherlands during the war, but his curiosity is peaked when he gets a visit from Semelier, a stern-faced collector of antiquities, who points him toward a British dig going on in Kenya that has uncovered something rather alarming.
It seems an entire Christian – Byzantine church that dates back to around 500 A.D. is being dug out from the desert and the damn thing looks as new as the day it was built. After arriving at the camp and after introducing himself to the various settlers present – including uptight priest Father Francis, guide Chuma and pretty doctor, Sarah Novak – Merrin descends into the buried church and immediately discovers that some radical remodeling has gone on. However, despite the fact that a large statue of a crucified Christ has been torn up and hung upside down, Merrin notices that the statues of spear wielding angels are pointing their weapons down instead of at the heavens in tribute.
From there on in, creepy shit starts occuring at regular intervals that includes hyena attacks, stillborn babies covered in maggots and raising tensions between the native tribes and the British soldiers based there; however, after a visit to the former lead archeologist who is currently cooling his heels in a mental asylum, Merrin discovers that the trouble aren’t coming from the church, but beneath it. It time for Father Merrin to meet a special, demonic, someone who is going to have a rather sizable effect on his life – the ubiquitous corrupter known as Puzazu.
Quite why someone thought that it was a good idea to hand over the keys to one of the greatest horror films ever made to the guy more used to realising Bruce Willis fighting the dad from Good Times on the wing of a moving plane in Die Hard 2, I’ll never know, but here we are. Essentially what happens when a studio doesn’t actually know what it wants from its product, Harlin’s attempt to match Friedkin’s jarring realism may, in fact, be one of the greatest examples of a directorial square peg in a cinematic round hole I have ever witnessed short of a dystopian future where Michael Bay announces he’s remaking Jaws with Nic Cage as the shark via motion capture.
Now, let’s get things straight, I like the majority of Harlin’s work, but his flashy visuals and reliance on lazy, 2000s style jump scares and musical stings is not only ill-advised, they don’t even work that well.
Weirdly enough, despite the fact that Harlin has shot this primarily for audiences that easily gets the widgets if something loud doesn’t happen every five minutes, the plot itself contains a fair amount of heavy material. Both Merrin and Sarah’s experiences during the Second World War are profoundly harrowing and the movie also takes a glance at British colonialism at the time, but as I haven’t seen Schrader’s version of the film at time of writing, I can’t confirm if they were always a major part of the story. Elsewhere, the harsher edge can also be felt in some particularly nasty things that happen to children as the film goes on with a small child being literally torn to ribbons by a pack of painfully digital hyenas and a particularly grotesque moment invoking a miscarriage that nails a distressing tone but for all the wrong reasons. Sure, the original movie had more than it’s fair share of distressing moments (green puke, vile language and an infamous misuse of a crucifix), but the shock value here feels less focused and ultimately achieves a rather classless gross out status rather than the nerve jangling shocks I’m certain the filmmakers were shooting for.
The cast, including James D’Arcy, Izabella Scorupco, Ben Cross and, for some reason, Brick Top from Snatch, are all fine, but seem ill-prepared, possibly due to the rather strange shooting conditions that movie was undergoing – D’Arcy in particular could have used at least another week to perfect that American accent. However, Skarsgärd, presumably incredibly comfortable as Merrin after shooting an entire film in the role already – keeps things barely watchable as he alternates between brooding, stomping around the camp looking for clues and getting down to some textbook Exorcist shit. In fact, you feel that the reason he signed on in the first place was possibly to bellow “THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELLS YOU!” on screen, but while the meandering and non-gripping plot drains your interest, the climax drains your patience.
Essentially taking the form of every dodgy, CGI, Exorcist rip-off you’ve ever seen, Harlin’s action credentials finally can’t be subdued any longer and he ends the film with the “surprise” flesh puppet of Puzazu awkwardly spider walking up walls while sporting make up deliberately reminiscent of Linda Blair’s ravaged visage from 1973 as Merrin pummles it with waves of “faith” like it’s a special projectile move from Street Fighter 2.
While there’s the odd infernal easter egg for those who care, even without the bloated budget necessitated by essentially making the film twice, Exorcist: The Begininng is a horribly unnecessary addition to a franchise that’s mostly struggled to match the stature of the original.
Let’s face it – Puzazu is missing that pizzazz.
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