The Exorcism

The Exorcism Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Russell Crowe, Ryan Simpkins, Sam Worthington, Chloe Bailey, Adam Goldberg, and David Hyde Pierce.

Director: Joshua John Miller

What’s Good: The production’s technical aspects are fine, and the production design inside the film within a film provides a cool environment to explore.

What’s Bad: The plot is a mess and the editing seems like complete chaos, which hinders the entire film as many things seem to come out of nowhere.

Loo Break: Sadly, the movie fails to retain attention from the viewer constantly, and this results in many boring parts.

Watch or Not?: Watch only if you are a huge fan of exorcism films, if not, this is a pass.

Language: English (with subtitles).

Available On: Theatrical release

Runtime: 95 Minutes

User Rating:

Russell Crowe’s career is wild. At one point, the actor was one of the biggest stars on the planet; he won an Oscar and made millions of dollars in the process. However, as of late, the actor’s career seems to be in a drowning phase, starring in movies that are clearly below him, and while he always comes on top as a professional and a terrific actor, you wished he could go back in time when he was starring in some of the best movies ever made. The Exorcism is not one of those movies that will be remembered but Crowe still does his job.

The Exorcism Movie Review: Script Analysis

The Exorcism comes from the mind of Joshua John Miller, and M.A. Fortin, who became talents to watch thanks to their writing contributions to The Final Girls, one of the most self-aware and fun slasher movies to come out in recent times. Since then the duo has been working on The Exorcism, a new film that promised to be not only scary but also thought-provoking, and coming from the minds of such writers you wouldn’t dare to think otherwise.

Unfortunately, The Exorcism tries to do too many things at the same time, and fails to execute even one of those ideas in the proper way. The film tells us the story of a struggling actor trying to put his life back together by starring in the remake of a cursed horror movie, and also fixing his strained relationship with his daughter. The setup seems fine on paper, but soon enough after the movie begins you can see that the movie doesn’t know where to focus its attention and the results are a bunch of ideas with no clear connective tissue.

The movie tries to go the meta route, which works to some extent thanks to Crowe’s recent work in The Pope’s Exorcism, which add a new layer of meta commentary to the struggling actor angle, but this comes from the fact that the other movie exists and was released recently, because by itself The Exorcism cannot find a clear road to create this meta commentary in a way that feels satisfactory, which is something the writers achieved in The Final Girls.

On top of that there are other aspects of the story that don’t really work, as the movie focuses at times on faith, religion, addiction, family, and many other topics. It feels like the movie was bigger at some point, but something happened along the way and many ambitious elements needed to be dropped, but we can still see the ashes in here, and they mess with everything else. Some lines even come up as funny, in an unintentional way, creating this sense of the ridiculousness that the movie is definitely not looking for, at least not visibly.

The Exorcism Movie Review: Star Performance

The performances might be the best part of the film along with the production design, and it is clear that no matter what Russell Crowe is one of the finest actors ever, as he can portray an extreme range of emotion and make it believable. The Exorcism might not have the best script he has worked with, but his delivery, cadence and energy elevate it in ways that should be recognized both by the filmmakers and the audience. As the movie evolves, so does Crowe’s character and there is definitely something personal going on, at least on the surface.

The rest of the cast does well, although it is clear that they are not on Crowe’s level, not only on an acting level but also because the material given to them does really allow for great character moments. Simpkins does fine as a young woman trying to find her footing in the world, and dealing with her troublesome father, but Chloe Bailey and Sam Worthington fade in the background, while Pierce feels completely out of place in his role.