Jonathan Kieran

Of course, I should not have been surprised at all. The top critics around the world have already rendered their judgments and the “highly anticipated” return to the gritty, harrowing roots of the original classic film from 1973 has been deemed a flybown heap of horseshit. The “rotten tomato” score stands at 22%. TWENTY-TWO PERCENT. Have a gander at some of the reasoned reviews from seasoned reviewers. You need a laugh today, a laugh at the expense of Pazuzu, Master of All Darkness and Pea Soup Mogul of the Void.

The fact that this consortium at Blumhouse was even attempting a serious, focused reboot of the original masterpiece was a fool’s errand from the beginning. Today’s crop of film school shits don’t know how to write compellingly for the screen. Nuance? Pacing? Resonance? Calculated Restraint? What the HELL are those things? Others have, in the past, tried to bask in the radiance of the original movie with almost uniformly sewer-coated results. The closest anyone came to capturing a hint of the first film’s eerie genius was The Exorcist III, which was in fact written for the screen by the story’s author, William Peter Blatty, and which featured a charismatic George C. Scott in the role of Lt. Kinderman, as well as a guest appearance by Jason Miller, who played the doomed (not quite?) Fr. Karras in the flagship film. That movie was something of a turgid, uneven affair without director Bill Friedkin at the helm, but it delivered a few genuine hair-raising moments and had a plot that resembled … well, a plot.

Ellen Burstyn is one of the greatest actresses of the past 50 years, and I am a big fan (Sarah Goldfarb, we LOVE you!) but her participation in this has to go down as a very bad career decision. Supposedly, Burstyn (who is in the film for about 10 minutes) agreed to sign-on for the project when they dangled a big, golden Give Our Movie Instant Credibility Carrot in her face, the funds from which she admirably donated to a favored actors’ colloquium. Allegedly, Burstyn was also given created input into the story. BIG MISTAKE. She’s not a screenwriter, babes, as glorious as she is.

What Burstyn is known for, however, is a commendable interest in all the religions of the world, great and small, and apparently that kumbayuh perspective, with its “Let’s All Hold Hands And Dance Through the Galaxy of Glee Together” post-woke vision made it into the film, because the two garden variety Devil Brats end-up being “exorcised” by every fucking religious guru under the sun at the end. Bibles and menorahs and rosaries and whirling dervishes and a whole, supercalafragilistically diverse brigade joins the jamboree of devil-smiting. It Takes a Village to spank Pazuzu, y’all.

This is one of the dumbest freaking ideas I have ever heard for a film’s denouement, much less for its infrastructure. At least for a film of this type and pedigree. Stop mining past brilliances to prop your talentless asses up, Hellywood. Get some original ideas and run with them. Even if they are not the best, at least they might have the honor of being original. Build from that.

By the by, I sure as hell hope that this film does not prove to be Ellen Burstyn’s cinematic swan song. I mean, she’s 92 and still active. Put her in something worthy of her talents at once and don’t let her near the script. Hell, don’t let the SCREENWRITERS near the script!

[Jonathan is busy writing and illustrating and finishing a whole slew of projects in preparation for upcoming major releases. Don’t expect a helluva lot of bloggin’ to get done unless something really strikes his fancy. Be patient. Marvelous things are on the way.]

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