The film that William Friedkin will long be remembered for, The Exorcist tells the story of demonically possessed 12-year-old Regan (Linda Blair), whose increasingly violent and supernatural nature drives her at-wits-end mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn) to call on Jesuit priest Damien Karras (Jason Miller) to perform an exorcism, something which the more enlightened priest knows little about.
Much like his work on The French Connection, Friedkin brought his documentarian mindset to The Exorcist and establishes a realistic base to this story of evil supernatural forces at their most vulgar. A slow burn of a movie, Friedkin builds up to the eventual head twisting, pea-soup vomiting horrors through procedural elements in which rational causes to Regan’s affliction are investigated and put aside.
When the reality of this dire situation comes to light, so to does the blood curling, spine chilling horrors that Friedkin unleashes upon the viewer with intense confrontational power, resulting in reports of cinema goers fainting during movie screenings. The 1999 “Version Never Seen” release proved the film had the same effect, thanks particularly to the ground-breaking make-up effects work by Dick Smith, whose transformation of a 12-year-old girl into evil incarnate was revolutionary.
The production of The Exorcist has become a thing of infamy, with Friedkin’s taskmaster approach, especially towards his actors, resulting in genuine reactions of pain and terror. While Friedkin’s unorthodox tactics were ethically questionable, there is no denying the results with career best performances by Burstyn, Miller, and Blair.
The impact The Exorcist had on Friedkin’s career cannot be quantified. Although he has delivered great films since then, the critical and financial results that The Exorcist drew would never be achieved by Friedkin again. He tried to replicate that magic with 2017’s The Devil and Father Amorth, but that spectacular failure only strengthens what Friedkin achieved with The Exorcist: a film of faith and horror, directed by a filmmaker of immense uncompromising vision.
