We are officially in the home stretch and what better way to celebrate than with a film that critics and audiences still think of as the scariest film of all time. Without any further ado, what an excellent day for...
Day 25 - William Friedkin's The Exorcist
The late, great William Friedkin poured everything he had into every single one of his films and you can definitely tell with The Exorcist. This controversial and Academy Award winning story, based on William Peter Blatty's shocking bestseller, concerns a mother trying to help her daughter as she is possessed by the devil. From the relationship between Regan and her mother to Friedkin's commitment to the process, there is no equal to The Exorcist. Take the sense of dread from Kubrick's The Shining and multiply it by 100 and that is the tone that Friedkin has for the entire film. Even the opening sequence, set in Iraq, establishes such a striking mood and perfectly sets up the conflict between good and evil that the film explores throughout its narrative. Just like The French Connection, Friedkin and cinematographer Owen Roizman employ a muted color palette with a semi-documentary aesthetic to tell the tale of Regan and her mother and one of the most disturbing and scariest aspects is that you can truly feel how cold the film gets once the actual exorcism scene occurs. The brilliance of The Exorcist is that Friedkin doesn't even treat it as a religious film but as an incredible drama featuring an outstanding mother/daughter story at its center. Friedkin and Ellen Burstyn, in a brilliant Academy Award nominated performance, strike at the primal fear of the film by exploring the lengths that a mother would go to protect and save her child, especially in the face of the unknown. Adapted by Peter Blatty himself, who would later direct the underrated The Exorcist III, Friedkin's film is an exploration of familiar horror and of ordinary people trapped in a horrific wave of extraordinary circumstances. Burstyn and Linda Blair are beyond incredible (both nominated) and commit themselves to their roles with a ferocity that could only be done with a maverick filmmaker of the New Hollywood, like Friedkin. The rest of the cast is phenomenal, Max Von Sydow, Jason Miller, Lee J. Cobb, and Kitty Winn all deliver wonderful performances that are of a piece with Friedkin's dread-inducing classic. From Blair's subtle hints that she is not doing well, to the medical tests, and finally the reveal of possession, Friedkin never lets go of the audience's heart beat and only pushes it to the extreme once the final hour kicks in. That final act, starting from the arrival of Father Merrin in that iconic shot of the house, all the way up to the ending is chill-inducing and contains some of the most intense and scariest scenes ever committed to film. And just like with a lot of these classics, the behind the scenes of this film is also an incredibly compelling story and is an incredibly vivid account of what it takes to make a classic like The Exorcist. Only a handful of films can have the moniker of "the scariest film ever made" but The Exorcist wears that badge proudly and actually reinforces it because the film is truly terrifying and it hasn't lost any of its power in the 50 years since 1973. There is no preparing for The Exorcist, you simply have to experience it.
*All of the recommendations that we make can be found at the El Paso Public Library Catalog!
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