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Okay, my cousin sent me a ticket (via Fandango) to go watch The Exorcism of Emily Rose and I saw it tonight.
I'm still forming an opinion, but my initial reaction is: really good story, sadly lousy script.
It wasn't cheap, I'll give it that. It was making an earnest attempt to do something, but I can't decide whether it went over lamely into the prosletysing column or if it was actually too chicken-hearted to say what it really wanted to say. Hard call on that.
I do know that the character development was poor, very poor. And that depictions of the faith (as it were) were negligible. You hardly notice that anyone is even Catholic except the guy wearing the collar (an even he doesn't tend to talk like a priest might under the circumstances). The exorcism itself, as expected, is sheer Hollywood, but it's not gratuitous, which surprised me. They really restrained themselves ~ and I think it's because they want the audience to take it more seriously on a lot of other levels.
The conclusion was also, I gotta admit, a little surprising. Just a wee little. For me, that's a huge plus. Mighty huge. So I give it points for that.
Is it a "horror" film? No. The PG-13 rating should alert people to that fact, but evidently people don't pay attention to such things. It's a drama with some skeery elements and clearly engineered to appeal to a broad audience (there's no cussing, no blaspheming, no girls in skimpy underwear, no gratuitous gore). For a movie about demonic possession, this is pretty amazing (and goes to show how much you can suggest without showing in a film).
I'll probably have more thoughts as I process. Right now I'm still digesting.
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catholic_media
I'm still forming an opinion, but my initial reaction is: really good story, sadly lousy script.
It wasn't cheap, I'll give it that. It was making an earnest attempt to do something, but I can't decide whether it went over lamely into the prosletysing column or if it was actually too chicken-hearted to say what it really wanted to say. Hard call on that.
I do know that the character development was poor, very poor. And that depictions of the faith (as it were) were negligible. You hardly notice that anyone is even Catholic except the guy wearing the collar (an even he doesn't tend to talk like a priest might under the circumstances). The exorcism itself, as expected, is sheer Hollywood, but it's not gratuitous, which surprised me. They really restrained themselves ~ and I think it's because they want the audience to take it more seriously on a lot of other levels.
The conclusion was also, I gotta admit, a little surprising. Just a wee little. For me, that's a huge plus. Mighty huge. So I give it points for that.
Is it a "horror" film? No. The PG-13 rating should alert people to that fact, but evidently people don't pay attention to such things. It's a drama with some skeery elements and clearly engineered to appeal to a broad audience (there's no cussing, no blaspheming, no girls in skimpy underwear, no gratuitous gore). For a movie about demonic possession, this is pretty amazing (and goes to show how much you can suggest without showing in a film).
I'll probably have more thoughts as I process. Right now I'm still digesting.
cross-posted to
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