BASED ON A TRUE STORY.
"AS SCARY AS THE EXORCIST, WITH A STRONG SPIRITUAL MESSAGE -- ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR."
-Phil Boatwright, The Movie Reporter
In an overwhelming slew of DVDs I received for this holiday season, this was amongst the throngs of titles as it was on my want list and I suppose Santa was aware of that. I will review each title as I view them, but let's begin with this creepy little "Law and Order-meets-the-occult" yarn that shocked audiences during its arrival because of the fact that this was supposedly based on a true incident of a college-aged young woman and her mysterious death...and the subsequent investigation afterwards, of which this film was based. With the Catholic Church being involved, as well as law enforcement officials and a prosecuting team that was hell-bent on proving young Emily's priest was directly responsible for her death, this film, although seemingly riding on its coattails, is in fact much different from its 1973 Exorcist brethren. Although that picture was also supposedly based on "real" events, where a young boy was afflicted by Devilish possession yet was changed to a girl for William Peter Blatty's novel adaptation, it too was said to be blown out of proportion, facts-wise. But how much of this was actually "blown out of proportion"? Why was the news of Emily Rose a hidden piece of fact until the release of this picture? What exactly did Ms. Rose suffer from? Was it epilepsy? Schizophrenia?
You know what bothers me almost as much as these aforementioned questions? Why did this film receive two DVD release versions -- an UNRATED cut in addition to the standard theatrical release -- when the UNRATED cut really didn’t seem to add anything to any scene? I wasn’t able to detect anything regarding extra fluff that would qualify as "bonus unrated material" on the DVD cut I received as a gift. With that in mind, let's take a look at the film without giving too much away for those of you who have yet to see it.
Indeed, the hoopla surrounding this film is accurate: The Exorcism of Emily Rose does play exactly like a Law and Order Halloween Special; it has a feel to it that is very unlike typical, glossed-over Hollywood blockbusters that are churned out today. While it does in fact deal with the occult on many levels, it is more a courtroom drama more so than anything else, yet the fashion in which director Scott Derrickson films the picture, what with the cutting back and forth between the exorcism sequences and the courtroom testimonies, is effective. The film opens with a shot of a farmhouse and the investigation of the death of a daughter in the Rose family by the medical examiner's office. The medical examiner tells Mr. Rose that he unfortunately cannot confirm that his daughter's death was by natural causes, setting the plot of the film up for us. After being told by an onscreen message that this film was "based on a true story," we meet our key players in the tale: Laura Linney (Primal Fear) plays a lawyer who is assigned the case of defending a Catholic priest (Tom Wilkinson, The Patriot) accused of actually causing the unintentional death of a college student named Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter, White Chicks). While Linney at first doesn’t want to take on the case, and Wilkinson doesn’t want her to represent him, the two finally come to an agreement to be able to tell Emily's story while also allowing Linney to win the case for Wilkinson in any way possible.
The film then develops into an investigation by Linney as to exactly what happened to this girl: supposedly, according to the story, she began suffering from seizures and wild gyrations and hallucinations in college, and was prescribed a certain medication to go on. When seemingly the drug didn’t work, the family called in their priest (Wilkinson) who concluded the only cure for Emily was the rite of exorcism -- because she was indeed possessed by "evil spirits" and not suffering from epilepsy or something else the medicine world tried to suggest. We, as the viewer, are taken into Emily's world during the length of the trial (which makes up the film's running time) through testimony from Emily's family and friends and Wilkinson himself; we see the first time she becomes "possessed" by what Wilkinson concludes are six demons plus Satan in her college dorm room, we watch as she walks around campus and notices people walking by whose eyes shockingly turn black and faces become demon-like, we witness demonic apparitions and faces form everywhere she looks. The confrontation sequences with the "demons" supposedly inside Emily are not along the lines of the shocking vulgarity exchanges as in The Exorcist, but more in line with the demonic activity portrayed in Constantine, meaning there are conversations between the priest and "demons" speaking in Latin overtones and foreign tongues -- they're not ramming crucifixes into the possessed victim's vagina and telling the witnessing parties to "lick them" or "f-k them." Those of you expecting this out of the occult/possession sequences in The Exorcism of Emily Rose will be disappointed.
The film dashes back and forth between testimony of doctors who claim Emily was suffering from a medical problem that was causing the bizarre hallucinations and spasms to these possession sequences where she would buck into wild, screaming fits of personality changes. Linney feels they have lost the case after multiple testimonies from medical personnel that distinctly felt Wilkinson, after being called in by the Rose family and doing an exorcism, was directly responsible for her death because he felt the girl should stop taking her prescribed medication and should succumb to the wishes of the Church. It was Emily, however, who agreed to the exorcism. At any rate, the only chance to possibly win this jury over by any long shot is, as Linney sees it, to put Wilkinson on the stand and let him tell his version of the Emily Rose story. A grueling cross-examination goes down by the prosecutor once Wilkinson is on the stand which leads to a surprising conclusion and decision by the jury on the case at the end of the film -- one which I am not going to give away for those of you who have never seen the film. The conclusion of the story was based on supposedly true events regarding the real priest involved in the case after Emily Rose's death and subsequent investigation. Before the final end credits roll, we are told, via messages on the screen, what happened to the real priest and Linney's character, and how Emily's real grave site is considered to be a holy place where people come to wish upon miracles and the like. It adds to the claims of a "true story" -- a story that according to the director Scott Derrickson is based on a true event of a college student somewhere in Germany if I am not mistaken that was supposedly possessed and received an exorcism before her death -- the real Emily Rose. The true aspects of the case are investigated nicely in the Special Features section of the DVD with an interview with Derrickson and the producers/writers who explain how much detail went into the research about the real case for the making of the film.
The acting isn't that memorable here, but I don’t believe you'll be renting or buying The Exorcism of Emily Rose for the dialogue exchanges; all the performances here are delivered in a toned-down, un-typical-for-Hollywood fashion which was refreshing, but some of the lines are delivered unnecessarily dramatic. Linney talks to Wilkinson at the end about how the case affected her personally and about a locket she discovered on the street after (or perhaps during) the case, but the dialogue here gets sappy and simply unnecessary to be honest. Probably anyone could have been called upon to play the role of the priest, played by Wilkinson; the performance was not that memorable even during the exorcism sequences. Actually, I enjoyed Wilkinson as "Lord Cornwallis" in Roland Emmerich's The Patriot better. From an outside perspective, the film really does play like an episode of Law and Order or perhaps even NYPD Blue with a Halloween/occult theme to it as most of the project takes place in a courtroom. The possession/exorcism scenes interject just enough to make this mildly entertaining -- nothing of what I can say about the last DVD I reviewed, the remake of House of Wax. That was a pile of clichés and horrendous amateur acting. This at least is watchable.
As I said earlier, I don’t know what constituted the UNRATED label for this DVD cut of the title; I didn’t see anything I didn’t see during the theatrical exhibition of the picture. There didn’t seem to be any added gore, added nudity, added language -- nothing really. The labeling confused me. But as I also said, I received this as a gift, so I'll be happy with it finding its way onto my shelf next to the Exorcist franchise titles.
