The Exorcist – Film Review

One of the most profitable horror movies ever made, this tale of an exorcism is based loosely on actual events. When young Regan (Linda Blair) starts acting odd — levitating, speaking in tongues — her worried mother (Ellen Burstyn) seeks medical help, only to hit a dead end. A local priest (Jason Miller), however, thinks the girl may be seized by the devil. The priest makes a request to perform an exorcism, and the church sends in an expert (Max von Sydow) to help with the difficult job.

We live in a world where sadly, these days, horror movies kind of just come and go without really having any sort of lasting impact on society. There are dozens of horror films from the past ten years that I truly wish were talked about constantly (I’m looking at you Hereditary and Midsommar) but unfortunately, it just seems as though society doesn’t care about horror that much.

But one horror film that was released several decades ago is still being talked about to this day is William Friedkin‘s The Exorcist, which serves as an adaptation of the novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty. There’s just something so inexplicably terrifying about this movie that nobody has been able to shake since 1973.

It’s an extremely terrifying movie that documents an ordinary family – the MacNeil’s. But their world gets flipped upside down when the twelve-year-old girl Regan starts to experience some truly horrific things. Her condition worsens and she eventually gets taken over and possessed by demonic forces.

Even if you’re not a parent, you’ll find yourself wondering what you would do if you were in the shoes of the mother in this movie. How terrifying would it be to have to watch your daughter be taken over by a literal demon? How would you even attempt keeping your sanity intact?

The fact that this film was released fifty years ago and plays/looks better than a lot of movies released today is staggering. This is a horror film that inspired an entire generation of filmmakers and it’s not hard to see why. The story is sublime and utterly terrifying. The acting across the board is so unsettlingly realistic it’s kind of scary, and the themes are incredible.

There’s really not much to say about this movie that hasn’t been said a million times already. If you, for whatever reason, have yet to watch The Exorcist, you’re truly missing out on one of the most remarkably scary, impactful films ever made. Even if you’re not a big fan of horror, you should at least see what all the fuss is about.

William Friedkin’s The Exorcist is a bone-chillingly terrifying showcase of supernatural horror that defined a generation. Fifty years later, it still holds up as a horror masterpiece.