In a prequel to legendary horror "The Exorcist," priest Lancaster Merrin encounters unspeakable evil in the deserts of East Africa.
John Frankenheimer dies. Paul Schrader is brought on board and makes a clever, psychological film which the suits don't get. Renny Harlin (er...) is then put in the director's chair for some reshoots in order to fill it with some more marketable "horror" stuff and ends up remaking the whole film in his brain's image. The result? Unholy. An abomination.
Luckily, Schraeder's superior film is due a limited release, so those of us who care can purge the memory of Harlin's badly thought out reworking of a really great idea. Above all, I simply am dumbfounded at the choice of Harlin as an 'Exorcist' director - a man known for big, dumb action films, only two of which were any good. His action sensibilities come into play in the last reel when all else fails.
Three decades ago, William Friedkin made a film with a vibrating bed and the world gasped. This has all of today's excessive gloss (including some very bad CG hyenas) and the result is risible at best.
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