2 of 3

And it is something that American evangelicalism has abandoned, for the most part—to their own detriment, because I think the result is, we have left gothic imagery and the power of that aesthetic to Catholics and to non-Christians. Not that Catholics are non-Christians—I think most Catholics are Christians—but my point is that there is a great value in that aesthetic and people need that. I think that the history of the Christian church is one that is marked by an understanding of this. When I went to Europe a few years ago, I felt very at home there, and I loved standing in Notre Dame and looking at all the gargoyles on the outside of that building, and realizing that, as scary and frightening as they were, what I was looking at was something that was built to the glory of God.

How did your interest in the horror genre begin?

Derrickson: When I was in film school. I knew that I wanted to integrate my faith with cinema in some way that was relevant to the culture. And I was looking for a way to do that, and I had just re-read The Screwtape Letters, and within the same year, I read Walker Percy's novel Lancelot, and there was a line in Lancelot that said, "'Evil' is surely the clue to this age, the only quest appropriate to the age. For everything and everyone's either wonderful or sick and nothing is evil … God may be absent, but what if someone should find the Devil?"

It really started to resonate with me, that this was the genre where a Christian could connect with mainstream culture, and there was potential there to not preach to the choir—not even preach to the culture, but connect with the culture. And that is certainly what I have been trying to do with a lot of my work. And in the case of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, I was very committed to not making a movie that was intended to give spiritual or religious or metaphysical answers to the audience. I really just wanted to make a film that was going to provoke the mainstream audience to ask themselves what they believe, and cause them to come away from the film provoked to think about and discuss spiritual matters and spiritual issues that I think are profoundly important.

The director with Jennifer Carpenter, who plays the title character

Turning to Emily Rose specifically: I'm aware that there is a possession case and I'm aware that there's a court case. Is the movie kind of divided like Law & Order? How does it balance these two elements?

Derrickson: They're pretty balanced all the way through the movie. With Law & Order, the first half is a cop show and the second half is a legal show, and this one is really a courtroom movie all the way through and it is a horror film all the way through.

Is the possession told in flashbacks?

Derrickson: Yeah, it's very inspired by Rashomon. And that's a term that gets thrown around by filmmakers a lot, inaccurately I think, because typically, any time a film has a fragmented narrative and has any flashbacks, people talk about Rashomon. But Kurosawa is my hero and I've taught courses on his films, and I love what he does, and Rashomon is, I think, his second greatest film after Ikiru. And I think what is so amazing about that film is not just that it's a fragmented narrative and not just that it has flashbacks, but that it really has flashbacks from multiple points of view that are not all compatible. And this movie does have that strategy at work in it. It is a movie that is looking at the past from various retrospectives, trying to extricate from that past what really happened.

next page... |  2 of 3

Related Elsewhere:

One Scary Performance	Printer view
Jennifer Carpenter, who plays the title character in The Exorcism of Emily Rose, is so convincing in her role that colleagues on the set nervously joked that maybe she really was possessed. (She isn't.)

---

The Horrors!	Printer view
Can Christians and horror movies co-exist in the same cineplex? Better yet, is the horror genre even redeemable? The author thinks so—but only if certain conditions are met.