The Exorcism of Emily Rose - Palm Beach Post movie review

'The Exorcism of Emily Rose' will make your head spin

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

Hold the pea soup and the spinning heads. The Exorcism of Emily Rose wants to give possession a new twist.

Believe it or not — and faith is precisely what this movie is about — director Scott Derrickson (Hellraiser: Inferno) and his way too classy cast want to sell you an exorcism yarn of ideas.

Screen Gems

'The Exorcism of Emily Rose'

The verdict: An empty-headed thinking person's exorcism flick, with a much too classy cast.

Director: Scott Derrickson
Starring: Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson, Campbell Scott, Colm Feore, Jennifer Carpenter
Run time: 114 minutes
Release date: September 9, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for thematic material including intense/frightening sequences and disturbing images.
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Sure, it comes complete with gruesome images, things that go bump in the night and the occasional insect munching, but those touches are just to keep you in your seat to listen to the battle between spirituality and the justice system. Yes, Emily Rose is surely the first courtroom horror flick and, by that measure, we can only hope it is the last word on the subject.

Based, as they say, "on a true story," this is the tale of a parish priest accused of the negligent homicide of a college coed who died while he was trying to rid her of demons.

But then everybody has demons in Emily Rose, including Father Richard Moore (Tom Wilkinson) who believes he acted on the side of the angels, martini-swilling, agnostic, workaholic defense attorney Erin Bruner (Laura Linney) who does not believe in the supernatural but is getting spooked at regular intervals and her adversary, assistant D.A. Ethan Thomas (Campbell Scott), a churchgoer backed into the corner of having to scoff at the will of God.

The problem is that horror fans will soon grow impatient with those wordy courtroom scenes and those who don't mind listening and thinking will be turned off by the schlock shock effects.