Lexmark3200
10-03-2005, 09:21 AM
I gotta yell you friends......I don't know what to make of this. Most of the film --- believe it or not --- takes place in a courtroom and there is very little demonic possession/exorcism overtones as the title would suggest.
Supposedly based on a "true" case (William Peter Blatty said the same thing about the later-proven-to-be-overhyped The Exorcist), this was the telling of a college freshman girl who supposedly got possessed by what we find out were SIX demons --- not necessarily the Devil himself; the film centers around the priest who performed an "exorcism" on Emily Rose (played by The Patriot's Tom Wilkinson) and how he was arrested and taken to trial for being accused of leading to the killing of this girl in real life because prior to the Catholic Church's involvement, Emily was being treated for metal diseases such as schizophrenia and seizure disorders, which are always commonly mistaken for "demonic possession." The state felt once the church was called in to do "exorcism rights" on Emily, and took her off her medication, it lead to her demise.
The film flashes back and forth between present-day courtroom hearings with doctors and Wilkinson taking the stand to testify, while inbetween, we see Emily's story being told --- how she was supposedly "possessed" one night in her college dorm room, and how her body began contorting into horrible shapes and she began speaking in strange tongues that are translated for us at the bottom of the screen. An exorcism is attempted by Wilkinson which fails after he demands that the demons inside Emily reveal their names to him -- that is when we learn there are actually SIX demons possessing this girl. The possession/exorcism sequences are pretty entertaining if you like these kind of films (which I do) but they're NOWHERE as shocking as William Friedkin's The Exorcist, and play more along the lines of possession scenes in say pictures such as Constantine. What gets me is this: how do we actually KNOW that this is what happened to Emily Rose during the Church's attempted "exorcism" of her? How do we KNOW that she gyrated and her eyes turned black and she began speaking in a language spoken in Palastine during the time of Christ and his deciples, as suggested in the film? Where's the evidence that this REALLY took place? The beginning of the film splashes the words THIS FILM IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY and the end sequence before the credits goes into even more "validity" of the case and what happened --- but I dont know if I buy it. Laura Linney does a good job as an aggressive, take-no-**** lawyer defending Wilkinson as the priest who performed the exorcism on Emily, but at the end, this just FELT like a made-for-TV film; something we're gonna wind up watching on Lifetime Network in a couple of years.
Still, I am contemplating a DVD purchase when it arrives because Im an absolute sucker for these possession/occult type films.........
Supposedly based on a "true" case (William Peter Blatty said the same thing about the later-proven-to-be-overhyped The Exorcist), this was the telling of a college freshman girl who supposedly got possessed by what we find out were SIX demons --- not necessarily the Devil himself; the film centers around the priest who performed an "exorcism" on Emily Rose (played by The Patriot's Tom Wilkinson) and how he was arrested and taken to trial for being accused of leading to the killing of this girl in real life because prior to the Catholic Church's involvement, Emily was being treated for metal diseases such as schizophrenia and seizure disorders, which are always commonly mistaken for "demonic possession." The state felt once the church was called in to do "exorcism rights" on Emily, and took her off her medication, it lead to her demise.
The film flashes back and forth between present-day courtroom hearings with doctors and Wilkinson taking the stand to testify, while inbetween, we see Emily's story being told --- how she was supposedly "possessed" one night in her college dorm room, and how her body began contorting into horrible shapes and she began speaking in strange tongues that are translated for us at the bottom of the screen. An exorcism is attempted by Wilkinson which fails after he demands that the demons inside Emily reveal their names to him -- that is when we learn there are actually SIX demons possessing this girl. The possession/exorcism sequences are pretty entertaining if you like these kind of films (which I do) but they're NOWHERE as shocking as William Friedkin's The Exorcist, and play more along the lines of possession scenes in say pictures such as Constantine. What gets me is this: how do we actually KNOW that this is what happened to Emily Rose during the Church's attempted "exorcism" of her? How do we KNOW that she gyrated and her eyes turned black and she began speaking in a language spoken in Palastine during the time of Christ and his deciples, as suggested in the film? Where's the evidence that this REALLY took place? The beginning of the film splashes the words THIS FILM IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY and the end sequence before the credits goes into even more "validity" of the case and what happened --- but I dont know if I buy it. Laura Linney does a good job as an aggressive, take-no-**** lawyer defending Wilkinson as the priest who performed the exorcism on Emily, but at the end, this just FELT like a made-for-TV film; something we're gonna wind up watching on Lifetime Network in a couple of years.
Still, I am contemplating a DVD purchase when it arrives because Im an absolute sucker for these possession/occult type films.........