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Art or merely entertainment? Thought-provoking exploration or Christian propaganda? Scary or annoying?

Critics are severely divided over writer/director Scott Derrickson's horror film The Exorcism of Emily Rose. A Christian with strong convictions about art, Derrickson says that he intended to make a scary movie that provokes audiences to leave the film discussing spiritual issues. He stresses that he did not want to preach, but to give viewers room to decide for themselves whether they think the devil exists. (Describing his movie, he's as likely to mention Kurosawa's Rashomon, with its multiple perspectives on a matter, as he is to bring up Friedkin's The Exorcist.)

Audiences, ignoring the reviews as usual, rushed out to see this troubling story about a suffering young woman, her doctors, her family, and her priest. The film "possessed" the box office in its opening weekend, earning $30 million instead of the $10 million to $20 million that analysts predicted, trailing only Sweet Home Alabama and Rush Hour in the record books of September openings.

Mainstream critics across the country hurled all sorts of accusations at the film. In Slate, David Edelstein rants that "The movie's overriding themes aren't novel. Many biblical scholars (even those without Doubt) have argued that one reason Christianity took hold in the Western World was the church's insistence that demons—and their overlord, Satan—exist. They needed demons to make God a necessity, not a luxury. Meanwhile, The Exorcism of Emily Rose takes us back about four centuries, to when mental illness was often interpreted as demonic possession." He adds that the acting is "unusually bad—atrocious, even," and the dialogue is "rattled off at a screwball-newspaper-comedy clip, the better to propel us into the courtroom and the hellish flashbacks."

The Hollywood Reporter's review reads, "The filmmakers argue that these courtroom scenes show a balanced argument, but the structure of the film sabotages them. It's told from the point of view of the defense, so supernatural happenings are presented as concrete events. Derrickson's characters are reduced to ciphers in a theological debate."

A.O. Scott (New York Times) calls it "a fascinating cultural document in the age of intelligent design." He concludes that the film is "propaganda disguised as entertainment."

But Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times) takes a more thoughtful approach: "Somehow the movie really never takes off into the riveting fascination we expect in the opening scenes. Maybe it cannot; maybe it is too faithful to the issues it raises to exploit them."

Meanwhile, Christian film critics everywhere praised it as an admirable provocation to discussion.

Personally, I found the film truly troubling—in a good way. Derrickson made the proceedings seem very real—at least his depiction of possession. (The Law and Order-style courtroom scenes feel more contrived.) He wisely avoids embellishing the details of demon possession with gratuitous special effects or gross-out sensationalism, adding just enough of the familiar genre conventions for it to qualify as "a horror flick." Poor Emily's affliction is portrayed in a manner consistent with testimonies and documented cases, and it is a terrifying and perplexing sight, this mix of familiar symptoms (epileptic fits, multiple personalities) and seemingly supernatural transformations.

While the film is far from uplifting, it can be described as "redemptive" in that it exposes evil without becoming sensationalistic or gratuitous. Believers will be pleased to see that, in Derrickson's story, while the damage done by possession is dismaying, it is ultimately God Almighty who has the last word.

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September (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49