This brings Chris to, for the first time in her life, consider otherworldly circumstances as responsible for Regan's transformation. Faith is a common theme in The Exorcist, both in a familial and religious sense. When Chris is faced with questioning all of her theological notions, and simultaneously, her role as a parent, she seeks a last resort from father Damien Karras, a priest and psychologist.
Unbeknownst to Chris, Karras is undergoing his own life crisis. Karras' mother is terminally ill and while he upholds his catholic faith for her recovery, she ultimately dies amidst Karras' examination of Regan's possession. This adds to Karras' own dwindling belief in Catholicism as he processes the world around him; people afflicted with homelessness, mental illness, and in his late mother's case, mortality.
Believing himself unfit to carry through with the exorcism alone, Karras' joins with Father Lankester Merrin to perform the act, with Karras serving as his assisting priest. Merrin soon discovers that the demon inhabiting Regan's body is Pazuzu, an entity he's familiar with from his time in Iraq. As the exorcism gives way, Pazuzu verbally taunts both priests by reminding them of times when their own human nature contradicted their religious faith; in Karras' case, the death of his mother and him rebuking God over humanity's suffering.
Respectively, both men lose their composure during the exorcism and give into very human impulses, specifically Karras who briefly altercates the possessed Regan. On the retrospective to Karras and Merrin, Chris is forced to reject scholarly teachings and life experience in exchange for something beyond her mental reasoning.
It has been nearly 40 years since The Exorcist started terrifying moviegoers, and despite countless imitators and special-effects advancements made over that time, the film remains unparalleled as a terrifying and disturbing cinematic experience. Friedkin says Blatty set out to write a non-fiction account of an exorcism that happened to a year-old boy at a psychiatric clinic in , but had to dramatize the story when it became too difficult to get specific details of what happened.
Those who did speak to Blatty requested that the character be changed to a girl, to help protect the identity of the boy who actually experienced the possession. Friedkin says that child grew up having no memory of the incident, and went on to an otherwise stable life. Friedkin said he recently retired from a long career at, of all places, NASA. The filmmaker never met that man, but spoke with family members who described telekinetic activity surrounding the child during his apparent possession.
A priest named Father William Bowdern reportedly performed the ceremony, with a younger priest named William Halloran assisting.
When The Exorcist was in the early stages of production, Friedkin met with the Rev. Robert J. You might assume the Roman Catholic Church would be viscerally opposed to seeing one of its more arcane rituals turned into fodder for a horror movie, but Friedkin says many church officials supported The Exorcist at the time.
The director claims church officials later told him they credited the film for inspiring new applicants to be priests and nuns. After all, the priests are the heroes of the story. Of course, not every cleric was a fan. This film was made by a believer. Certainly a great many moviegoers believed it. Stanley Kubrick once told Stephen King that he thought The Shining was an optimistic story — because it suggested there really was life after death. In a similarly twisted way, The Exorcist has the same message about belief in God, of course the devil is part of that package, too.
The main character is a year-old girl, an innocent corrupted by outside evil. From his office at Fifth Avenue in New York an ironic address if ever there was one , Friedkin and Blatty had given up and started auditioning actresses who were in their late teens.
Then year-old Linda Blair and her mother came in without an appointment, hoping to get a shot at the part. What kind of things does she do? And that's a big part of why re-watching "The Exorcist" now is different: Society's relationship with horror has changed. The horror genre is perhaps better than any other at immediately commenting on current societal fears. In the '70s, as Vietnam, the Kent State shootings and Watergate sapped optimism, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" depicted young people falling prey to a group of murderous cannibals and "The Exorcist" presented an innocent girl who becomes the victim of a ruthless, unknown evil.
They each go about storytelling very differently but share the same cultural anxiety: young people experiencing trauma as a result of things totally out of their hands. As American political rhetoric shifts, so do the things people fear. And right now, what Americans are most afraid of is one another. More: 'The First Purge' trolls its biggest inspiration: the Trump administration. Both movies embody the unease Americans are feeling, perhaps better than any other horror movies in the past few years: There's no alien, spirit or otherwise mysterious evil force to blame.
The bad guys are just people.
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