On Sunday, 1 October 2023, I had the opportunity to catch 1973’s The Exorcist on the big screen.  It’s the fiftieth anniversary of the film, if you can believe it; it debuted the day of Christmas the year my Dad graduated from high school.

That was astonishing to me.  I’m thirty years younger than my Dad (to the year), and was born twelve years after the film’s release.  That said, it was very much a part of the Zeitgeist of the early 1990s.  To be clear, I did not see the film at that tender age—thank goodness!—but it was spoken of in hushed whispers as “the scariest movie of all time.”  I vividly recall my older brother telling me how he stayed up late to watch the film (he was probably a young teenager at the time) on television, and how it scared him so much, he couldn’t sleep.  Powerful stuff!

I saw the film years later—I don’t recall when or how old I was—and while I found it creepy, I didn’t understand all the hubbub.  Yes, it was an excellent film, but “the scariest movie of all time?”  C’mon.

Then I saw it on the big screen.  That experience changed my assessment of the film and its horror substantially.  In the dark, in the theater, the film’s incredible cinematography and effects demanding my full attention, left an indelible mark upon my mind—and, perhaps, my soul.  I get it now:  The Exorcist is terrifying.

There’s so much to unpack from this film—the theology, the rich characterization, the gruesome special effects, the terrifying medical scenes (the angiography is more unsettling than most of the possession scenes)—that it’s hard to know where to begin.  But what really struck me is how casually Regan’s possession came on in the film.  She is a bright, lively little girl, living with her actress mother in a rented home in D.C. while her mother shoots a picture.  Her parents are separated, with her father overseas; the relationship between Regan’s mother Chris and her father is clearly strained, with Regan’s father largely absent from the picture (he only “appears” via a phone call, during with Chris is exasperated).

The film never gives us the one, clear reason why the demon (Pazuzu) possesses Regan.  It’s suggested that her playing around with a Ouija board is responsible, but the film presents the board so casually, it’s not entirely certain that is the source of the possession.  Modern films would beat the board over our heads, with a spooky, ominous score and loads of foreboding.  But in The Exorcist, it’s presented as a child’s plaything, with Regan’s mother even laughing and doting over “the game.”

The suggestion seems to be that evil wheedles its way in through the tiniest cracks.  Chris is not religious, and her daughter endures the pandemic of divorce that swept through the nation in the late 1960s, and which continues to this day.  She’s left to speak to a seemingly harmless spirit—but, again, it’s not clear if that is the gateway, or if Pazuzu picked Regan to get close to Father Damien Karras.

Father Karras is another compelling figure:  a former boxer and tortured priest struggling to care for an elderly mother.  At one point, a possessed Regan/Pazuzu states that it hopes Karras will perform an exorcism, as that would allow Pazuzu to possess the priest—an ominous bit of foreshadowing, and one that implies how powerful Pazuzu is.  That the demon is right is supremely unsettling.  The redemption, perhaps, comes in Karras’s selfless sacrifice to ensure Regan can live, although it doesn’t speak well to the effectiveness of a true exorcism.

The film is also expertly shot, making the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., as well as Georgetown University itself, a “character” of sorts in the film.  The screening I attended had a featurette following the film all about the iconic locations in Georgetown that show up in the film, and how the foreboding Gothic architecture of the university further highlights the monumental enormity and gravity of the Catholic Church and its institutions.

The Exorcist came out at a time when the ructions of the 1960s counterculture movement had decayed from bright optimism to depressed failure, a time when the social and political upheaval of the nation dashed the dreams of the hippie New Agers and spread a blanket of cynicism across the nation.  Nevertheless, faith in the power of science to adjudicate modernity’s problems was high.  Father Karras is a psychologist by training, and deeply opposed to the idea of exorcism initially.  Doctors subject Regan to a grueling series of tests, tests which would seem primitive, cruel, and impersonal by today’s standards, but which were cutting edge medicine in 1973.  As I noted above, the angiography scene is difficult to watch, and the audience feels the rage and hopelessness of Chris when the doctors propose another spinal tap and angiography for Regan after the first scan comes up clean.  Even against overwhelming evidence that there is something spiritual at play, Chris struggles to get buy-in from the Catholic Church (which, indeed, does extensive due diligence on exorcism cases, including consulting with psychologists and psychiatrists independent of the Church).

It’s a gripping cinematic example of the tensions between modernity and traditional belief, how even with our machines and our wealth, they won’t protect us from the unseen—and they may even beckon them.  It is only through the power of Jesus Christ that our victory is assured (although that is not precisely the message of the film).

Also, probably don’t mess with Ouija boards.  To quote another film, “Sometimes dead is better.”