Why does The Exorcist scare the shit out of everyone?
Behind the scenes of a chilling supernatural horror.
(The Exorcist, 1973)
Table of Contents
Everyone loves a scary story on Halloween. Well, today I’d like to share one from my personal life.
When I was 9, I watched The Exorcist. Now if you know anything about this film, you know it’s not for kids. How I got my hands on it remains… a blur. Needless to say, I was traumatized beyond belief (and now you know why I’m a little… kooky).
But before you chastise my parents (or more specifically, my mother, who made me aware of the film’s existence), you should know she tried to warn me.
See, after watching a bunch of PG-13 films before I turned 10, I started to think I was the shit. On top of the world. Nothing could stop me. So, like any well-intentioned mom, mine attempted to scare me straight. Which, to be fair, should have worked.
MOM
You know, the scariest thing I ever saw was this movie about a little girl who gets possessed by the devil!
ME
Sounds boring.
MOM
It was awful, just awful.
ME
Yeah right!
MOM
She starts doing these weird things. Crawling on all fours. Speaking in a devilish tongue. One point, her head rotates 360 like a demon!
ME
Hm… go on.
MOM
You don’t understand. When this film came out, people fainted. They were rushed to the hospital. We had ambulances waiting outside theaters, for god’s sake!
Me
Huh… might be worth a watch.
MOM
🤦♀️
Sigh, I know what you’re thinking. What the fuck is wrong with me, right?
The point is, I did it. I watched the scary film I wasn’t supposed to. And it fucked me up.
Not only was I too young to comprehend what I’d seen, the shocking imagery lived rent-free in my head. Possession dreams became a recurring nightmare and I vowed never to watch it again. The Exorcist had such a profoundly disturbing impact on my life, it took me 15 years to go anywhere near it.
Turns out, my mother wasn’t kidding. This film was literally a cultural phenomenon.
Tarantino's Nightmare
“There were two movies my mother didn’t allow me to see…
The idea was that it might be too intense for human beings.
Story and impact
Somewhere in my twenties, I became curious about the book that birthed “the greatest horror film of all time”.
Now an adult who’d seen the ugliness of “the real world”, I was a little jaded, a little cynical, a little unfazed by the things I once feared. “How bad can it be?” I told myself, reading The Exorcist for the first time, my bedroom door slightly ajar.
I was amazed how much of it I remembered. How visual the writing was. If you’ve seen the film, you know it has a certain tension. A coiled darkness.
We begin on the ancient grounds of Iraq, charged by a hypnotic call to prayer. An excavation site crawls with hundreds of groundworkers. A relic, unearthed. Good or evil, we don’t know. But the omen of a scarlet sky gives us little hope.
So it begins. (The Exorcist, 1973)
It’s a mesmerizing sequence, so seamless and delicately crafted, you’re on edge from the get-go.
There are no horror clichés, no jump scares, no loud music. Yet you sense something strange is afoot. Simmering gently, eerily. The question is: what? Of course, once you see it, you’re glad it took its time.
It’s benchmark horror. The film that reshaped supernatural storytelling.
Central to this unravelling is the heinous, foul-mouthed transformation of 12-year-old Regan MacNeil (played by a chirpy Linda Blair). How could a sweet little girl possibly portray such evil? Eyes so cunning and a demeanor so venomous, you wonder what possessed Friedkin to recreate this monstrosity.
This is as horrifying in the book as it is on film.
But what disturbs me now, having watched the film more than twenty years later, is the horror of not knowing what the hell is happening to this child.
Do demons exist? Is god real? If science could explain hallucinations, surely it could explain this malicious contagion. But when the mother (played by Ellen Burstyn) goes to the best doctors in the world, she is tragically abandoned and advised to seek out an exorcism.
“The victim’s belief in possession helped cause it,” they say. “And just in the same way, this belief in the power of exorcism can make it disappear.”
Writer William P. Blatty dedicates a significant portion of the story to this maddening conflict, oozing through its chief protagonist: Damien Karras.
Jason Miller as Damien Karras (The Exorcist, 1973)
Father Karras is a psychiatrist but also a man of god. When he requests permission from the Church to conduct an exorcism at the behest of Regan’s mother, he sees the their hesitation. Does he lack faith? Conviction? Purity?
“The exorcist, the Chancery Office told him, would be Lankester Merrin. Karras would assist. The news had stunned him. Merrin! The philosopher-paleontologist! The soaring, staggering intellect! His books had stirred ferment in the Church; for they interpreted his faith in the terms of science, in terms of a matter that was still evolving, destined to be spirit and joined to God.”
It seems Karras is nowhere near the ranks of the more experienced Father Merrin, a former archaeologist who’s successfully conducted an exorcism before in Africa.
Merrin is portrayed on-screen by legendary Swedish actor Max von Sydow, who formerly dueled with Death in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, and was 43 at the time he played the 80-year-old priest in The Exorcist.
Bring it on, Death (The Seventh Seal, 1957)
Not his first rodeo. (The Exorcist, 1973)
In the book, Merrin is described as a towering figure. Calm, resolute, discerning, unencumbered by doubt. But he’s weathered by old age. Seen too much. “My doctor says I shouldn’t,” he says, accepting a glass of brandy, “but thank God my will is weak.”
Whereas Merrin represents the holy matrimony of faith and intellect, Karras represents the heart of man. Like you and me, he is tormented by perpetual uncertainty. Is it a case of multiple personalities? Three voices? Maybe more?
“There is only one,” said Merrin softly, slipping the stole around his shoulders.
How can he be so sure, Karras wonders. How can anyone know for sure? Of course, we learn that the demon had a score to settle. None of it was random, it was personal. Merrin had been summoned.
But the more Karras tries to understand, the more conflicted he grows. “There’s not a day in my life when I don’t feel like a fraud,” he says at one point. “Priests, doctor, lawyers, I’ve talked to them all. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t felt that.”
Yet exorcising demons requires neither certainty or revelation. That much Karras proves by making the ultimate sacrifice, but questions remain. If the demon is as powerful as it appears to be, why doesn’t it loosen the straps that bind him? It’s a valid question, one Karras is bold enough to ask. To this, the demon assuredly responds:
“That’s much too vulgar a display of power, Karras.”
This is what makes the story unsettling to read and to watch. It tests the limits of your belief through a tremendously convincing antagonist.
In fact, the demon’s bone-chilling response inspired a plethora of artists, including heavy metal band Pantera, who used it as a title to their sixth album Vulgar Display of Power (their highest selling one to date).
Atlantic Records, 1992
And if that’s not enough, take it from the Prince of Darkness himself.
In 1973, Ozzy Osbourne saw The Exorcist at the suggestion of former Black Sabbath manager Patrick Meehan. Here’s how he described it many years later.
What does the demon want?
The big question is, why? Why does the demon choose this girl? Why does it demand an exorcism? And why has this story continue to terrify so many of us, especially ye of little faith?
While the book makes this explicit, the film leaves it open to interpretation.
One scene in particular comes fairly close to explaining it. It’s a speech by Merrin, addressed to Karras, following the first half of the exorcism. (It was later edited out in the newer version for being, what filmmaker William Friedkin considered, “too obvious”).
“That scene.” (The Exorcist, 1973)
I must say, I wish this was included in the new theatrical cut. Even if it feels obvious, the shocking imagery is more than likely to make you forget.
We don’t see demons like this in real life. But we’ve all seen evil take root in the hearts of men. “We have no need of Satan to manage our wars,” Merrin reminds us in the book, “these we manage for ourselves.”
The Exorcist's movie magic
While the book was terrifying, it didn’t traumatize me the way the film did. And there’s a reason for that. The book wrestles with doubt, shrouding evil in a kind of theological mystery. At one point, Karras even blurts out the obvious:
Yet the film presents imagery so grotesque, so unprecedented, it provokes audiences into believing the impossible. As Tarantino put it: “I’m not a Catholic. But when I’m watching this film, I believe.” That’s what makes The Exorcist a powerful cinematic experience. It doesn’t ask you to suspend your disbelief. It does it for you.
Much of this hypnosis comes from legendary makeup artist Dick Smith, a pioneer who changed the special effects industry with his breathtaking transformations in a range of films, including The Godfather.
The godfather of makeup transforming Marlon Brando (The Godfather, 1972)
Another day, another demon face for Linda Blair (The Exorcist, 1973)
As for the happy little girl who portrayed the epitome of pure evil, Linda Blair went on to star in a handful of sequels, TV movies, and did a brief stint on Broadway. She is currently working on an autobiography that is expected to, um, turn heads.
Even though The Exorcist was brought to the screen by Friedkin, it was Blair who delivered the performance of a lifetime after being cast at the age of 12. (Yes, twelve!) Selected from a pool of hundreds, she went on to receive the Golden Globe and an Oscar nod for her incredible work, ultimately leaving Hollywood to start an animal welfare foundation.
Years later, Blair would open up about the physical and psychological toll of playing the part, which included fracturing her spine, burning her skin, and surviving cold temperatures on set. “It was hard living with the aftermath of The Exorcist,” she would later reveal to the press.
Source: Studio10, YouTube
None of this had to do with demonic possession, of course, though it did make for excellent PR for the franchise. More than anything, it revealed the technical and legal challenges of making a film like The Exorcist back in the seventies.
The harsh glue used for Regan’s frightening makeup, the air-conditioning used to make the actors’ breath visible on camera, the mechanical malfunction that left Blair with scoliosis and Burstyn with spinal injuries. Blair was a child actor and while she probably had reason to sue, neither she or Burstyn took legal action against the studio.
Despite the horrors of making the film, Blair gave her all to a historic performance that left audiences faint, nauseous, and hysterical (in the best way possible). Later, she paid tribute to director William Friedkin who passed away at 87.
Linda Blair and William Friedkin on the set of The Exorcist (1972)
The verdict
As far as reception goes, legendary critic Roger Ebert raved about the film, giving it 4/4 stars, while acknowledging its excesses:
Others like Pauline Kael from The New Yorker famously panned the film:
I like when reviews are polarizing. They force you to form your own opinion. You know, like I did… *cough* at nine *cough*. As for filmmaker William Friedkin, the story stood for something less frightening and more eternal.
Wondering if it’s time to re-watch an old classic? Or experience it for the first time?
Took me 15 years just to go near the book. Took another 10 to re-watch it.
Want my advice?
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