Well acted and involving: but who borrowed from whom?
This Showtime original would just be a moderately budgetedExorcist variation, except - it is based on the original incident which
inspired The Exorist. (For this reason, it is incomprehensible to
me why some people here are calling it an `Exorcist ripoff.") I found
it engrossing and entertaining, but I had some problems with the
premise. The film purports to be based on the only possession
case in modern America, but in fact it changed the original story in
many key ways. The original event took place with a 14-year-old
boy in 1949; the film has an 11-year-old boy in the early 1960s.
The date change gives the film an opportunity to talk about Vatican
II-type changes taking place in the Catholic church, along with
Kennedy's election and the civil rights movement. These are
meant to spice up the movie but are mostly irrelevant to the theme
and take away from the story. Dramatic horror-type events ensue
that we expect with possession movies, but now I'm left wondering
which events were mostly true to the event (in an afterword, one of
the original attending priests did say a bottle of holy water went
sailing past him), and which ones were post-Exorcist inspired.
Thus, while this story was supposed to inspire The Exorcist, we
now wonder who borrowed from whom.
All this is saved rather nicely by an intriguing storyline, but in
particular, superb acting by the principals. Timothy Dalton plays
Father William Bowden (which was the priest's actual name), the
priest-professor-exorcist: this, far more than James Bond, is his
type of role. The boy `Robbie" is extremely well acted by young
Jonathan Malen; he plays a more active demon-possessed
youngster than Linda Blair, who was admittedly more spooky, did
decades ago. Other notable performances include Christopher
Plummer as Archbishop Hume and Piper Laurie as Robbie's old
Aunt Hanna. So I count myself among those who thought this a
worthwhile film, especially knowing that it was at least
semi-factual and leaves you pondering what possession really is,
although I would have preferred the real story without the
embellishments. This story reminds us how unfamliar the whole
concept of possession was to Americans prior to the Exorcist. I'm
giving it an 8.
score 8/10
shobill 10 July 2004
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0643671/34998
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