May 05, 2005
Exorcist: The Beginning
Stellan Skarsgård .... Father Merrin
Izabella Scorupco .... Sarah
Patrick O'Kane .... Bession
James D'Arcy .... Father Francis
Remy Sweeney .... Joseph
Andrew French .... Chuma
Ben Cross .... Semelier
David Bradley .... Father Gionetti
Alan Ford .... Jeffries
Eddie Osei .... Emekwi
Israel Aduramo .... Jomo
Julian Wadham .... Major Granville
I find it ironic that all the movies I've reviewed that deal with religious subject matter have gotten more pitchforks than halos.
This DVD had absolutely no extras! And I'll tell you why. Because the director who originally had been hired to direct the movie didn't give the studio the gore-fest they wanted, so they fired him and brought in another director. The new director re-shot 90% of the movie.
This re-shoot would explain the crappiness that is this movie. Quite honestly, there was no reason for this movie. Did we really need Father Merrin's backstory? Not really, but we're getting it anyways.
The problem is that the Big Bad that Father Merrin fights isn't even The Devil. It's some minor league demon. Big whoop. And in between big gory blood lettings, there's a lot of people just walking around dark places looking scared. Seriously. I fast forwarded through 10 minutes of no dialogue, just one guy walking around in a dark church, looking at frescoes on the wall. *yawn*
Don't even bother with this movie unless you feel the need to have seen all the Exorcist movies.
Posted by xinh at May 5, 2005 05:57 AM
Was this the version directed by Renny Harlin or by [firstname] Schrader?
I've heard the Schrader version is much much better. There's a big drama behind why there's two...At any rate, I think the Schrader version is now called 'Exorcist: the prequel' or something.
x
This was the Renny Harlin version.
I had read that the studio is going to release the Schrader version on DVD so I'm interested in viewing that one to see how it compares.
Posted by: xinher at May 7, 2005 11:18 PM