Exorcism movies

Ms. "Madame X" raises a good point in a post about the movie "The Exorcism of Emily Rose."^[1] As permission is granted for unlimited use, I include the article, in its entirety, below.

Emily Rose is the name of my youngest niece, so when I saw the movie trailers about “her” exorcism, I winced. “Poor Em,” I thought, “She’ll be getting hell from her big brothers.” So to speak. “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” is loosely based on a true story of exorcism gone awry, in which the possessed young woman dies and the priest performing the exorcism is tried for negligent homicide. Defendant, prosecutor, and defense attorney all become engaged in internal trials of doubt and faith as the legal system, in above its head, confronts “more things in heaven and earth…/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Inevitably, “Emily Rose” invites comparisons with the mother of all exorcism movies, “The Exorcist,” which shook audiences in 1973 (and was reissued several years ago with additional footage). The comparison is legitimate: like “The Exorcist,” “Emily Rose” is destined to be housed in the “Horror” section of Blockbuster Video, but both movies offer more than arbitrary shocks and screams. The author of “The Exorcist,” William Peter Blatty, first delved into the topic as a college student at Georgetown, where, while beset by doubts about the reality of the supernatural, he heard a religion professor describe a case of diabolic possession. “My God,” he recounted in a September 2000 interview for IGN FilmForce, “if someone were to investigate this and authenticate it, what a tremendous boost to faith it would be.” The resulting book and movie, though heavy on the sensational and most memorable for the really gross parts like the head spinning and the creepy voice coming from Linda Blair, both solidified Blatty’s personal belief in the beyond and set off animated debate in and out of 1970s religion classes. Differences between Blatty and “Emily Rose’s” director/co-writer Scott Derrickson tell a lot about the sources of religious dynamism in the 1970s and our own decade. Believing in the devil—and in a power greater than him—is not the same as espousing belief in orthodox Christianity. For example, a 1999 interview of Blatty published on the website darkplanet.basespace.net describes his recordings of disembodied voices of ghosts: “Once when I was ‘voice recording’ at my home in Greenwich, Connecticut, I heard on tape playback a female voice saying quite clearly, ‘This is boring, I’m going over to Paul Newman's.’ Newman's house is in nearby Westport.” Though one might wonder why it matters to a spirit—who is presumably unrestricted by space--that Newman’s house is “nearby.” Scott Derrickson also was drawn to the subject of diabolic possession for essentially religious reasons. In an interview for the Catholic News Service, he says, “Either there’s a God or there’s not. And whichever way you decide, it’s still a terrifying aspect to contemplate.” Certainly Derrickson terrified himself in the course of his research, which included viewing “a lot of video of real exorcisms…I guess it’s good knowledge to have…but I’ll never do that again.” Derrickson comes at this subject matter not from a crisis of belief in God or the supernatural (a Presbyterian, he reports that he is “one Chesterton book away from crossing over” to Catholicism), but from a conviction that the topic of possession can confront the viewer with the most important questions life has to offer: “Is there a devil? And, more importantly, is there a God? And, if so, what’s the implication of that?” Which means that, in an admittedly different genre, he is fighting the same good fight that Mel Gibson fought in “The Passion of the Christ.” Both have confronted evil, on and off the screen, and both know that it is more than special effects. Despite some free-lancing by Protestant faith healers, exorcism is still generally considered to be Catholic by most people, as is evidenced by the Catholic protagonists of both “The Exorcist” and “Emily Rose.” The implications of this do not seem to be lost on potential convert Derrikson, but maybe it should give cradle Catholics (and Protestants) food for thought. Anti-Christians largely target Catholic Christianity for blasphemous or sacrilegious actions, such as cross-dressing homosexuals garbed as nuns. Satanists perform Black Masses and not Black Bible Studies. Like the evil spirits that exorcists must contend with, earthbound enemies of God’s Church recognize the real thing when they see it.