From my crowd report...



Don't be fooled by the courtroom drama thing, peeps.

I enjoyed this quite a bit, even though it wasn't what I was expecting. It's definitely not a fast-paced, chilling, shock-filled horror film. It's more of a interesting, thought-provoking courtroom drama punctuated with flashbacks of the plight that Emily Rose suffered (though some of these were quite creepy). It's mainly a serious drama with very good performances by Tom Wilkinson (one of the best actors around) and Laura Linney. Jennifer Carpenter did a good job of screaming her head off and acting like she was possessed as well. This film also has one scene with some great cinematography that reminded me of Hostage. I think this will have bad legs though because the audience of mostly teens seemed quite restless throughout most of the movie- it wasn't the movie they were expecting from the admittedly brilliant but deceiving marketing campaign making the film out to be a straight horror film.

B+

not very scary but scary enough at times ... courtroom stuff not so bad either. the movie suffers from excessive dramatisation ... B-

I found this scarier then the exorcist. i don't think i'll be able to sleep well tonight.

A

Wow... well that was dissapointing. Not only were there barely any horror scenes in the movie, but every last one of them was poorly handled and dull. Despite Laura Linney giving it her all (and mostly suceeding), Tom Wilkinson was unusually bland in his performance. While the idea of a courtroom horror movie is an interesting one, the execution was very poor. There are a few scenes played for scares during the trial, but none are even vaguely tense. The most intense these demons get is when they open blinds, shut doors, and make it hard to get to sleep. The fiends! But then again, the flashbacks aren't much better. Since we already know that Emily dies and the preacher lives, they lack any tension, not that there are many frightening moments anyways. What's worse, the film sinks so low to get a scare out of the audience that it tries to frighten us by having house cats attack Tom Wilkinson. I shit you not, HOUSECATS.
While one must applaud a horror film that tries to also be a theological debate, they can equally look down on it for becoming so one sided. The prosecuting lawyer is painted out to be more of a villian then the demons posessing Emily for christ's sake! And don't get me started on the cliches. The late arrival evidence, the witness who dies the day before he goes on trial, even the verdict are all desperately by the book (and don't argue that it's because it's "based on a true story", it's an incredibly loose adaptation at best), and since the whole film centers around the courtroom scenes, it comes off as no better then your average episode of Law & Order. C/C-

C+. The exorcism scenes were very well done (and Jennifer Carpenter is great), but the courtroom scenes are almost insulting to anybody who's watched even an episode of The Practice. And for a movie that prides itself on comparing faith vs. science, it's about as impartial as Fahrenheit 9/11.

Note that I find the original Exorcist extremely overrated and boring, and all the ones that follow to be mediocre, with Beginning being decent.

I think you'll like it, BKB. Don't expect to be scared out of your seat (unless you're that kinda guy who gets easily scared...), though.

It was nice to see a film that leaned more to christian beliefs than the secular one,yes this film is biased in that regard,but still,the movie was not good,i found it boring,the only thing that impressed me was the way carpenter could control her body into such forms,other than that i didnt feel creeped out or any sympathy for any character.

D

The Exorcist will be the only exorcism film to ever be remembered.

I wouldn't even compare this to The Exorcist. That film is about how the possession of a girl eventually makes a priest (Karras) regain his faith. Emily Rose is about finding out exactly who's responsible for the death of a teenage girl.

The Exorcist, in my opinion, is one of very few perfect films -- I can't find a single flaw in it. Perfection on screen.

Haven't seen Emily Rose, but I am with Zing (and I think baumer as well) on this one. The Exorcist might be well-made technically and it is well-acted, bgut that aside it is the most overrated horror movie period. Most of the time it is simply laughable and not for a single second tension comes up or scares.

The movie was much better than I expected it to be. Laura Linney and Tom Wilkinson have given great perormances and that alone is worth the price of admission. The movie is riveting, the pacing is good. The ending in the case is refeshing and evoked a very good reposnse from the audience as did Linney's scene with her boss after the case.

A-

I'll defend The Exorcist until the day I die. It never scared me, but it's one of the most riveting character pieces I've ever seen.

I'll defend The Exorcist until the day I die. It never scared me, but it's one of the most riveting character pieces I've ever seen.[/quote

Agreed.

That's odd, I find it to be one of the most flawed "masterpiece's" ever. The acting and the editting are about as terrible as you can get.

You adore Friday the 13th Part 4, so I'll brush past that opinion

I third that.. (except that it still scares me a little bit after 3 viewings or so... )

And I pretty much attack the holy grail of horror film fans by saying that I think The Exorcist AND Halloween are overrated.

I guess the acting and score of The Exorcist was good and all.

But, c'mon...

Who was actually scared of The Exorcist? I mean, I was so excited to see this movie (saw it at the age of 8) because it scared my cousin (who was a year younger) so much, he couldn't sleep alone for near a month. It was supposedly the scariest film ever made.

HELL NO.

It's average at best, and all the sequels (except Exorcist: The Beginning, which was also average, but not bad) sucked.

I dont know people. The whole movie really felt like I watching those Unsolved Mystery type tv movies. It definately does not look like a horror movie and directors have to remember that too much background sound and music totally ruins the suspense and spookiness of the movie. Something that the amercanized version of Grudge suffers from which was too much background sound while the japanese version was so much superior because the footage looks a little grainier, cerebal and quietness. Think Ill give it a C+ only because its more about a movie about gaining faith as opposed to believing too much in science. Otherwise it would of gotten a C-

Buddy, The Exorcist caused near hysteria when it was released in the 1970s. It's just dated in 2005, that's all.

It caused neat hysteria? Wow.

The Exorcist did cause widespread panic. Type "William Peter Blatty" into Google.com and read some of the bios. Most of them recount the tales of his work including the film. The entire set was supposedly cursed, but that is more urban legend.

There are many tales of people leaving the theater due to the content.

Yeah, well, apparently people in the 70s were easier to scare than nowadays experienced and horror-overloaded folks.