Related: • Talk About It/Family Corner • Interview with director Scott     Derrickson • Interview with actress     Jennifer Carpenter • What Others Are Saying

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The Exorcism of Emily Rose begins on an ominously moody note. A man comes to a farm covered in snow and frost, and for a moment, he simply observes the environment around him. Cats run by in the distance. Wasps buzz around a nest attached to the local farmhouse. A priest looks out from a window on the top floor. Then a woman steps outside and asks, "You're the medical examiner?" The man comes inside, walks upstairs, and enters a bedroom—and before the door closes, we catch a glimpse of a police officer's badge.

This sequence is impressive partly because it relies so strongly on visuals. Most of the rest of the film, for better or worse, is preoccupied with words, and even its strongest visual moments are guided by, and framed within, the narration of its characters. The movie is loosely based on the true story of Anneliese Michel, a German student who believed she was possessed by demons, and whose death during an attempted exorcism in the 1970s led to a court case in which two priests were convicted of negligent manslaughter. So the film—which changes numerous details, including the young woman's name—is essentially a courtroom drama in which lawyers and witnesses argue over what really happened to her.

Jennifer Carpenter brilliantly portrays the tormented soul known as Emily Rose

Also, director Scott Derrickson is an open and articulate Christian who has worked mostly as a screenwriter, and who clearly wants to get people talking about the supernatural. In addition, he and co-writer Paul Harris Boardman develop their characters in such a way that the film may cause Christians to rethink their own approach to such matters. So while the film does present arguments for both sides of the case, you are still conscious of how it steers the conversation here and there, and you cannot help but notice the rather calculated ways in which the characters speak and thereby reveal things about themselves.

For example, when the district attorney's office charges Father Moore (Tom Wilkinson) with criminal negligence, it makes sense that they would openly talk about letting a Christian handle the prosecution; they are public figures thinking primarily about appearances, and they don't want people to think they are prosecuting a priest for his faith, per se. But we never get close to Ethan Thomas (Campbell Scott), the Methodist who gets the job. We are told that he sings in his church choir and teaches Sunday school, and, the first time we see him, he turns down an offered drink and asks for water instead. So we get the sense that he is a strict legalist, or someone who follows the outward form of religion, at least.

Laura Linney plays the role of defense attorney Erin Bruner

What's more, Ethan argues in court that Father Moore's beliefs are superstitious, which may reflect how Ethan has put his faith aside for the sake of his job, or—more likely—may reflect a common Protestant attitude toward certain kinds of Catholic beliefs. (To be fair, though, Father Moore does come across like a naïve and uncritical sort.) Either way, if Ethan has any uniquely Christian response—public or personal—to the case of Emily Rose's possession, we never see it; and he comes across less like a person, and more like a symbol of a certain kind of Christian that the filmmakers presumably don't care for.

Then there is Erin Bruner (Laura Linney), Father Moore's lawyer for the defense. She drinks a fair bit and keeps a book by Carl Sagan on her bedside table, so we know she's not a believer. We hear that she is a rising star in the law firm for which she works, and that she recently defended a killer who was not found guilty and is now, she says glibly, sunbathing on a Miami beach; so we know that she's a bit cynical and eager to advance her career. But through her contact with Father Moore—and through her legally unorthodox attempt to defend him by arguing that Emily Rose really was possessed—we also know that she just might become a believer, or, at least, might become less secure in her lack of belief.

Tom Wilkinson as Father Moore, accused of killing Emily during an exorcism

The story of Emily (Jennifer Carpenter) herself is relegated to flashbacks, and Derrickson seems to want to be fair to believers and unbelievers alike; every time Father Moore or some other witness describes the strange phenomena Emily saw, the voices that came from her mouth, or the contortions her body went into, another witness offers a scientific or naturalistic explanation, and it is left to the viewer to decide which of these explanations makes the most sense. But the film has been sold as a horror movie, and so, as though the filmmakers realized the courtroom scenes were outweighing the scary flashbacks, Erin begins to be haunted by strange phenomena too, and not very convincingly.

One of the film's hokier elements is the way spooky things—watches stopping, doors flying open, machines turning on spontaneously—often happen at exactly 3:00 a.m. (kind of like how things kept happening at 2:30 a.m. in White Noise, or at 3:15 a.m. in The Amityville Horror—both of which, by the way, are scarier films). Perhaps demons really have adapted to modern clocks and become so punctual, but scenes like these always bring to mind that scene in End of Days where Arnold Schwarzenegger asks which time zone a prophecy refers to. A subplot involving a frightened psychiatrist (Duncan Fraser) who witnessed the exorcism also falls back on genre-bound clichés. Christians may also want to discuss the arguments made in court by an academic expert on possession (Shohreh Aghdashloo) who says that clinical drugs can actually hinder attempts to cast demons out of people.

Carpenter's performance is terrifyingly convincing

But there is much to admire in this film, too. While Derrickson uses handheld cameras and a few special effects to convey Emily's possessed state, he also frames relatively quieter shots in interesting and provocative ways: Father Moore looking through a window as Emily plays the piano; the phrase "In God We Trust" posted on the wall above the judge's seat; the wide, open, barren landscape glimpsed through the living-room window between Erin and Emily's mother when the lawyer pays a visit to the farm. Carpenter brings a special, frenzied physicality to her possession scenes. And the film's challenge to the viewer—to doubt his or her own doubts about the supernatural—is commendable.

That said, I wonder if we Christians have leaned a little too strongly on the idea that proving the existence of the Devil would therefore prove the existence of God. Thirty years ago, films like The Exorcist spoke against the nihilistic modernism of their own times by brazenly asserting the existence of a spiritual world, and that's definitely a start. But I wonder if, in our post-modern world, we may need to hear something different. The cross-cultural testimony given by the Aghdashloo character—and the fact that Linney starred in another based-on-a-true-story movie about alleged supernatural events, The Mothman Prophecies—leads me to consider that many cultures have believed in demons without believing in the Almighty God of Judeo-Christian belief. It may not be too hard to get people to believe about the supernatural realm. Getting them to believe in God is something else.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. Do you believe Christians can be possessed? If not, then how do you account for Emily's alleged possession? Is it just psychological? Does it mean she is not a Christian? What about the explicitly Catholic visions she says she has? 2. Do you believe possessions can be influenced by the drugs people take, as Dr. Adani says? What do claims like hers say about the relationship between soul and body? 3. Do you think the film is balanced or neutral? Or does it favor one side over the other? (Consider the opening shot of blood dripping from barbed wire, which reflects the "skeptical" view of Emily's condition; also consider the way Erin seems to be haunted by the same forces that haunted Emily.) If you did not know that the film was co-written and directed by an evangelical Christian, would you have been able to tell just from watching the film? 4. Is there a place for skepticism in Christian faith? How do you respond to Ethan's charge that Father Moore believes in superstition? What is the difference between superstition and faith? Should Christians ever accuse each other of superstition? If so, when, and why? 5. Do you believe in coincidences? What does the scene with Erin finding the locket add to the story? Is this film about Emily, or is it about Erin? Or is it about someone else? 6. Do you believe that the existence of the Devil proves the existence of God?

The Family Corner	For parents to consider
The Exorcism of Emily Rose is rated PG-13 for thematic material, including intense/frightening sequences and disturbing images. The possession scenes include images of deformed human faces, dilated pupils, epileptic seizures, bleeding hands, and similar phenomena. There are also a few four-letter words.

Photos © Copyright Screen Gems

© Peter T. Chattaway 2005, subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

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.

Unfortunately, the film is not as even-handed as Derrickson wants it to be—there are several elements that incline viewers to look down on skeptics. The prosecutor, played by Campbell Scott, is portrayed as naïve, foolish, even mean-spirited, while the priest's defendant, played by Laura Linney, seems thoughtful, open-minded, and sympathetic.

My brief review of the film, and my in-depth interview with writer/director Scott Derrickson, are posted in Seattle Pacific University's Response magazine.

Peter T. Chattaway (Christianity Today Movies) writes, "The film's challenge to the viewer—to doubt his or her own doubts about the supernatural—is commendable.

That said, I wonder if we Christians have leaned a little too strongly on the idea that proving the existence of the Devil would therefore prove the existence of God."

Christianity Today Movies also features Chattaway's interview with Derrickson, and an interview with actress Jennifer Carpenter by Mark Moring and Todd Hertz.

Steven D. Greydanus (Decent Films) writes, "The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a worthwhile story for the issues it raises and explores, though I find it ultimately tragic rather than inspiring."

Greydanus praises it on some levels, and finds a few flaws as well. "I'm grateful to [the movie] for offering another cinematic point of reference for the phenomena of possession and exorcism, and for its sympathetic depiction both of the believer, Fr. Moore, and the skeptic, Erin Bruner. Unfortunately, the film doesn't offer the same nuance to the prosecutor … who's basically an uncomplicated jerk, if a generally rather persuasive one. … Didn't Derrickson realize that this undermined the film's integrity?"

He also features a look at "The Making of Emily Rose."

Tom Neven (Plugged In) writes, "This is not a movie one sees merely to be entertained. It's pretty grim in places and quite dark. But it is not exploitative. It also tells a story of faith and compassion. … The exposition during the courtroom scenes also provides excellent fodder for discussion revolving around the relationship between faith and science—and between faith and doubt."

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) says, "The performances are solid across the board. … The narrative tone remains respectful of Catholic tenets and rituals. The film's occasional excursions into horror territory—including unsettling and at times intense depictions of Emily's ordeal—are relatively few, but used to chilling effect. … Though not without flaws … Emily Rose is a well-crafted and intelligent movie that aspires to engage heads and not just spin them."

Christian Hamaker (Crosswalk) writes that the movie "points to answers that will be mostly encouraging to believers, but the film may leave enough lingering doubts to assuage a skeptic's troubled conscience. … Perhaps most controversial will be the film's overt Catholicism. While the story is ultimately about the existence of God, it is told most passionately through Emily's own direct revelation of spiritual truth—and to accept her revelation is to accept certain beliefs exclusive to Catholic theology. Protestants should consider themselves warned, even though any Christian in search of a thoughtful, yet accessible, film likely will find rewards here."

Josh Hurst (Reveal) writes, "Though its effect as a philosophical or theological endeavor is severely blunted, the film works remarkably well as an engrossing, solidly entertaining thriller."

John Zmirak (Godspy) notes that Emily Rose "raises and addresses profound questions about the nature of evil and why God permits the suffering of the innocent—but doesn't pretend to answer them."

Cliff Vaughn (Ethics Daily) says the movie "takes a page from 1992's A Few Good Men and 1997's Contact—two mainstream films concerned with presenting different sides of important issues. Those movies handled serious topics about as well as any popular Hollywood product is going to, and Emily Rose has done the same."

Kevin Miller (Hollywood Jesus) concludes, "Despite perhaps one too many 'cheap scares,' The Exorcism of Emily Rose definitely earns a place alongside Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, The Omen, and other films in the 'smart horror' genre." At the same site, Elizabeth Leitch says, "With its structure, its script, and its artistry, this film did an amazing job of making me think about possibilities."

Hal Conklin and Denny Wayman (Cinema In Focus) promise, "We won't spoil the ending by telling you what the jury decides. From the perspective of the film-viewing jury, though, Emily Rose's story would make anyone think twice about what we know about the demonic influences around us—and sometimes within us."

For a large collection of mainstream reviews, visit Rotten Tomatoes.

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