The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Spoiler Alert: Don't see the film, and your evening won't be spoiled.

The harshest criticism I can level at The Exorcist Exorcism of Emily Rose is that it makes The Devil's Advocate look inspired. Scott Derrickson has taken a workable, if derivative, premise and ruined it. The film tries to be a combination horror flick and courtroom drama, and fails as both. Whenever any thing genuinely creepy happens in the flashbacks, the plot lurches back to the present, deflating any built-up tension.

Add to that an almost total lack of concern with the title character. Emily Rose, at least according to a vision she witnesses post-exorcism, is nothing more than God's pawn, a puppet who is battered and beaten for the greater cause of sending us all back to the Middle Ages. Not surprisingly, then, her function in the film is the same. We are treated to just one brief scene where she's a normal young woman about to head to college (country mouse cliches notwithstanding), and somehow that's magically supposed to make us sympathetic. It doesn't. Her histrionic convulsions and contortions make only the teeny-boppers scream; the rest of us are laughing.

Was Emily Rose genuinely possessed, or epileptic? The film's sympathies obviously lie with the spiritual interpretation, though the prosecution's skeptical case is far more convincing. The defense's "Is it possible?" closing statement has to rank among the worst in the history of cinema.

What more can I fault? The chronic abuses of suspense with no payoff? The cardboard characters? The long, boring stretches? The insipid dialogue? ("You're much prettier than your picture." "You want that rising star to keep rising.") The overwhelming debt to The Omen, The Exorcist, Constantine, Rosemary's Baby, every other demon movie ever made? Movies that, no matter how flawed, are seared into the imagination?

Your brain, your gut, and your wallet will be offended if you go. You've been warned.

Bonus: I'm not the only one who went away disappointed.

James Berardinelli: "The Exorcism of Emily Rose is entertaining to the same degree as any courtroom drama of limited imagination can be."

Rob Blackwelder: "Derrickson clearly fancies his film a large intellectual step up from the horror genre, but the structural concessions in his courtroom plot -- made to accommodate those flashbacks in a way that builds maximum apprehension -- are so blatant they become more of a hindrance than a help in telling the story."

Phil Villareal: "If you thought "The Exorcist" went too over the top with its rotating heads and pea soup projectile vomit, wait till you get a load of Emily's histrionics. Homegirl looks like she's an extra from the "Thriller" video set on fast-forward."

David Gilmour: "[Derrickson's] a rock-solid, competent technician; he can scare you, but so can my seven-year-old stepdaughter when she hides behind the couch."

Melinda Ennis: "A "Rashomon"-like approach of visualizing the two disparate explanations is inconsistently executed, then discarded altogether at the end. The exploration of unquestioning faith (religious or otherwise) in a world of pop psychology and cynicism is worthy of a far better movie."

Peter Travers: "At one point, Scott raises an objection. 'On what grounds?' asks the judge. 'How about silliness, your honor?' Amen to that."