If there’s one phrase I’d use to describe The Exorcism of Emily Rose, it’s A Lot. One part of it brilliant; not all of it good, some of it downright tasteless.
The 2005 movie (which turns twenty this year, somehow) comes from Scott Derrickson, probably best known for his later foray into the genre with Sinister (and The Black Phone, though, as far as I’m concerned, the less said about that, the better), and follows Erin Bruner (Laura Linney), a lawyer tasked to represent Richard Moore (Tom Wilkinson) in a case accusing him of culpability in the death of the titular Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter) during an exorcism, leading her to question her own agnostic approach to faith.
And that premise very much sums up the strange cross-section of genres that this movie inhabits – it’s a courtroom drama, it’s a meditation on Christian faith, it’s a possession horror movie, it’s a story about mental illness and the devil and where those things overlap in religious perspectives. And I think what makes this movie such a divisive one is how well it handles some aspects of the featured genres – and how much it struggles with the others.
Because, as a possession horror movie, I think The Exorcism of Emily Rose is kind of a banger. Jennifer Carpenter is outstanding as Emily Rose – the physical performance she brings to this role is easily up there with the best ever, and one that’s been imitated but never bettered in so many modern possession horror movies since. Derrickson has a great eye for atmosphere and surreal scare sequences, and that is on full display in some of the weird spiritual planes that Emily explores over the course of the film. If we were just talking about that aspect of the movie, yeah, you got me – it’s pretty great.
But where the movie takes a turn for the questionable to me is with the courtroom drama stuff – and, specifically, how it drew on a true story as part of the marketing. I remember this movie coming out, that iconic poster of Emily Rose moving into the mist with the great big “Based on a true story” there above even the title – the idea that this was just a dramatization of real-world events was a huge part of what grew the buzz around this film, and the unusual approach to horror via the lens of the more grounded courtroom drama serves to bolster that. The notion of putting faith on trial is, without a doubt, a really interesting one – while the movie sometimes descends into first-year philosophy musing on the nature of faith and religious belief, and fudges an ending with some severely clunky dialogue to both assure viewers that the priest was found guilty but not really because gosh-darn, he really did believe, it’s still an intriguing place to start from.
But, if we’re going to start talking about true stories – this movie is actually exceedingly loosely inspired by the story of Annelise Michel, a young German woman who died of malnutrition after nearly a year of exorcism rites to excise the demon that her parents and church officials believed was possessing her. This is a “possession” case that’s even recognised by the Catholic Church now as being the result of severe mental and physical illness, a young woman losing her life because the people who should have helped her refused to view her distress through anything but a religious lens.
Which makes its invocation in this specific movie a rather uncomfortable one, all things considered. Because The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a movie that falls strongly on the side of the actual existence of demons – and, most importantly, the actual existence of demonic possession in this particular case. The re-framing of the priest and parents in this way – as much victims of this as Emily Rose is – feels really tasteless in the context of the Annelise Michel case which was used as a promotional point for this film. How are you going to turn a story of negligent homicide of a vulnerable woman into a vaguely inspirational tale of a cynical lawyer finding her faith?
If the movie had distanced itself more from its inspiration, perhaps this wouldn’t be so much of an issue – but, at the same time, if putting that front-and-centre was going to be such a huge part of the marketing campaign, I feel like it should have taken a more even-handed and less apologist approach to this case (which, for my money, the excellent Requiem, a German-language film based on the same story that came out the following year). I’m really interested to hear your take on the movie below – what’s your take on it now, and what did you think of it when it came out? Let me know in the comments!
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via Eye of Newt)
No But Listen 