Author: Sean W. Fallon

The following review of The Exorcist, written by Sean Fallon, first appeared on the wonderful film site Writer Loves Movies… An Homage To Our Love For Cinema, where film critic Natalie Stendall is hosting guest contributors in a search to determine why we love the movies we love.   — I love procedural movies. Anything that takes you through the nitty-gritty of a murder investigation or a well-planned heist is like catnip to me. A big reason why I love The Exorcist is because it isn’t the film that we think it is. People who have never watched it assume it’s a gory, jumpy, fast-paced horror film about a possessed girl doing crazy things for two hours. All of the marketing and all of the iconic images of the film focus upon Regan’s transformation from sweet little girl into foul-mouthed monster. If someone quotes a line from The Exorcist to you it will probably come from Regan (or it will simply be “The power of Christ compels you!”). In reality the movie is actually very slow and almost boring at times as it painstakingly shows, on one side, the agony of a mother helplessly watching her daughter succumb to some kind of illness/madness and on the other, the torments of a priest experiencing a crisis of faith following the death of his mother. The Exorcist was directed by William...