EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE Thoughts

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AndyDursin
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EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE Thoughts

#1 Post by AndyDursin »

Very interesting movie -- a legitimate cross between a courtroom thriller and a supernatural one. If you're a genre aficionado I'd absolutely check it out.

What works best is the film's intriguing portrayal of possession and the nature of evil and faith. It's shocking to see a movie in this day and age actually provoke an intelligent discussion of these subjects, and yet EMILY ROSE does just that. Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson and particularly Campbell Scott are excellent -- in regards to the latter, the movie does offer an alternative explanation to Emily's plight that seems completely plausible, despite the supernatural elements to the picture being played up.

It's also spooky and compelling -- and also somewhat disjointed. The beginning of the movie seemed rushed, as if large chunks of it had been cut (there should have been more of Emily's background and Laura Linney's first few meetings with Tom Wilkinson). Thus, you never really felt an emotional connection with Emily or what was going on with her -- nor do you really feel for Linney and her questioning of faith as much as you might have.

Chris Young's score, meanwhile, is appropriately creepy, though it seemed to be completely channeling Lalo Schifrin's rejected EXORCIST score in several sequences.

Despite the shortcomings, the movie is compelling and has some highly effective moments. It's disturbing at times and quite well-made, and definitely one of the better genre films I've seen in a long while.

Hopefully there's a longer cut of the movie that might surface on DVD -- not to change the movie from a gore standpoint (it's the strongest PG-13 film I've ever seen), but rather from a narrative one. I'd bet a good amount of scenes were cut due to time (the film still runs a full two hours). Some more depth to Emily and the flashbacks we see could make a good movie a better one. Let's hope it happens.

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