Okay so I watched the dreaded horror film. I found it scary as shit. Not only that, but really disturbing. The fact that a tiny little pure sweet innocent girl could be fouled by such a demon and to watch her transmutation was truly terrifying. But then I guess that’s the reason they made it that way.
I remember the first time I watched Poltergeist. I was eight years old. I was scared pissless. I couldn’t sleep for a week. I had this big old bedroom with creaking floorboards and I was the only one there. My parents and bigger brother’s rooms were down the hallway. I use to huddle up under the sheets coz I was so scared.
Then I remember a logician type that got introduced to the family. Something like that - a mathematician or logician; in any case he dealt with logic. What he basically did was to tear the plot of the movie to shreds giving me all these logical extensions of the movie “dilemma” and reasoning things out so as to make the film seem silly by the end of it. Finally he started making fun of it and the cure was complete.
I’m hoping you can do something similiar to this movie.
Now before we talk more please NOTE I am not talking about the idea of possession or anything directly religious - just the way things are portrayed in the movie. In other words, we are asked to believe that the girl is in fact possessed by the devil (or a demon or legion - that word still sends shivers down my spine). So is there anything that IT says that is in contradiction with itself or the basic premises that it states at some other point in the movie? What about other types of logical errors (again note: I am not implying errors in religion itself e.g. the idea of exorcism - just the way events are depicted in the movie).
Oh and anyone who watched the movie and didn’t find it scary could you please let me know why.
(And to all those smart-alecks who will inevitably announce “It was the RELIGIOUS premise behind the movie that scared you doofus - you gotta deal with that!” I say, "humbug!! It was just the movie itself; I keep thinking about a little girl standing in the corner of my bedroom at night - and that girl is HER!!! Considering I’m moving in with my fiance in six months time, I don’t want to
seem like a wimp.)
As far as logical loopholes go, I really couldn’t find many. OK, there was the fact that Regan reacted adversly to the holy water which was really just tap water. That suggests a psychological problem rather than a supernatural one. As contradicted by the many supernatural things going on.
And the last time I watched it, I didn’t find it so much scary as annoying.
I didn’t find it scary because… I don’t know. It was gross, but banging beds and deep voices aren’t what frightens me, I guess. I think we just each have our “fright zones,” and that movie wasn’t in mine.
It was a bit scary for a minute, then she started swearing up a storm and I was too busy laughing to give a shit about her ugly face. Seriously, whats funnier than a little girl going “Your mother sucks cocks in hell!”
I’m not sure if this is really what you are looking for, but it’s seems illogical to me that a demon would do stuff like that. If it really wanted to do some damage, it would do its best to act like a human so the people around would blame the girl instead of suspecting there was 3rd party involved.
For example, it could act normal, but then sneak into Mom’s room at night and bury a knife in her back, severing her spinal column. Mom’s paralyzed, the girl goes to a psycho ward.
I suppose part of the premise is that the demon doesn’t know how to act normal enough, I suppose.
One could ask what the importance of possessing a little girl’s soul would have in the cosmic scheme of things. Why not possess someone like Pat Robertson or the Pope and use them to discredit Christianity in the eyes of the world? Or a political leader who coud then legalize things like prostitution, gay marriage, etc.? (Assuming that God’s opposed to such things. If you’ll note, Nevada has legalized prostitution and gambling, but hasn’t been hit by a major natural disaster in ages. Based on this, I think we can assume God’s pretty cool with that.)
Well, I can’t think of any logical loopholes in the plot of the story, but perhaps it might give you some comfort if I give you my ten-cent dissertation on the film as being misogynist & racist:
The long prologue: Father Merrin wanders around Iraq for a good quarter of an hour in abject fear of…something. This long sequence is meant to set the tone of the film and instill a sense of looming dread. It also intends to create a parrallel between a godless, chaotic land in the Middle East and the godless hedonistic world that Chris McNeil is raising Regan in - Hollywood & Washington D.C. And how does the film establish this sense of alien otherness? By showing shots of poor arabic muslims - praying to Mecca! Well no wonder Regan was possessed!! Father Merrin, a representative of the ONE TRUE CHURCH, wanders by devout muslims without heckling them loudly!
Not only is Chris an athiest, but even worse - she is a Hollywood movie actress and single mother! Plus, she has a live-in female personal “assistant” (shades of lesbianism!) and is friends with a foul-mouthed drunk director. In the scene when Chris is on the phone trying to reach Regan’s dad (who has neglected to call on her birthday), we get the detail that Regan’s father is off in Rome with his new love. Why didn’t they just squeak in the detail that Regan’s father is now living with a woman named Mary who is still a virgin?
As a goth-inclined, horror-buff teenager, I read more than a few books on the subject of demonic possession. And any reputable historical survey of the phenomenon can’t fail to point out one salient detail - that “demonic possession” is often a hysterical reaction toward hormonal changes in girls during puberty: Most victims of ‘possession’ tend to be adolescent girls; the possessing demons involved tend to be succubi (a female demon that specializes in erotically tempting “devout chaste” priests who themselves specialize in exorcising adolescent girls); involve ‘shape-changing’ as a symptom of possession (like, say, growing breasts!); and ‘formerly sweet-natured girls’ becoming foul-mouthed and insolent. (Yeah, like no nice little girl EVER turned into a rebellious teen!) In “the Exorcist”, it’s particularly noteworthy that Regan’s most shocking transgression is to stab herself in the crotch, and thereby causing herself to bleed from her vagina. The exorcism ritual is really Regan’s punishment for growing up!
If none of the above gives you pause, let me just add that the late film critic Pauline Kael made an interesting point while reviewing the film: the producers claimed to have interviewed & screen-tested over 100 young girls for the part. Kael observed that the parents of those young girls must have known what the part entailed, and what their young daughters would be required to do if they got the role. Kael wondered if the mothers of the girls who were turned down for the part ever went to see the film and thought to themselves: “That could’ve been MY little girl up on the screen cursing and stabbing her vagina and vomiting pea-soup all over people!”
Here’s one possible illogical aspect to the movie. Remember when Regan turned her head 180 degrees around to face the priest? Now, it could be argued that the priest was having a vision, but I don’t think so. Nothing else in the movie or surrounding the circumstances of the possession indicated that it was anything but was really going on. I wondered after the movie how she fared after that little physical trick. Was she in traction for several months? Didn’t appear so. Can anyone point to how a human being could perform such a physical act without some permanent damage?
I will give you that there were some scars that appeared and disappeared. Again, illogical. I know this movie was about the supernatural, but it just didn’t seem possible that such physically atrocious things could happen to this child without permanent physical damage. If the bed jumps up and down and breaks, why didn’t it miraculously fix itself?
And I didn’t buy the fact that the priest was able to trick the demon into coming into himself and then being able to quickly kill himself for two reasons. First, isn’t suicide a mortal sin? The priest is going to go to hell for committing suicide. Wasn’t there another plausible way to divert the demon. Jesus did it with pigs, didn’t he? Why not these priests? Second, the minute the priest became possessed, he would have been under the demon’s control. Even if he attempted to move toward the window within a couple of seconds, the demon would have had control over the priest’s mind and body, which it did appear momentarily when the priest took the demon within himself. So the demon, who could bounce the bed, physically attack and hurt others, open and close doors at will and cause a little girl to stab herself with a crucifix and turn her head 180 degrees, cannot take control and prevent the death of its priest host? Not believable and illogical.
Hey Mantelope, if you want to see a really scary movie, go rent “The Grudge.” I slept with all of the lights on in the house that night. “The Exorcist” is child’s play compared to that one.
(1) Shameless Plug. If you like “The Grudge”, you will piss yourself over theHouse.
(2) I can only repeat what Revtim and Tuckerfan have said over “The Exorcist” - why does the demon possess Regan? What does (s)he intend to accomplish by doing it? The scene where the statue of Mary is desecrated is also a little pointless - who did it? Can the demon influence the physical world? If so, why didn’t it do more damage? Did Regan do it herself? If so - and this is more a critisism of the director than the story - why doesn’t this come up at all in the rest of the movie?
From the point of view of making an effective horror movie, it’s much scarier to the audience to make them see it happen to somebody (sort of) like them, so they can think it can happen to them or their kids. Of course, the mother was at least a somewhat famous actress, so that might weaken this effect a bit. Her fame or money didn’t really seem to help, that I can recall.
From a logical point of view, I would simply write it such that the demon has limited choice for some reason. Perhaps Regan’s playing with the Ouja board helped open the door (as my Mom warned me they might do…)
There’d have to be other reasons, but they were not only irrelevent to the film, but to explain it in detail would take away from the “it could happen to me or mine” effect. “I don’t play with Ouija board while having the flu and masturbating to ‘Mama’s Family’, so I’m safe! Until the weekend, at least…”
Are you saying that politicians naturally do the devil’s work? Because I’m not aware of too many doing such things (assuming they are evil acts).
Retvim, you have a point, but at the same time, there’s the whole Omen series in which Satan’s brat runs a major corporation and gets political office. Besides, what’s more terrifying, your kid going batshit crazy or having some lunatic in power who can not only kill you, but get your soul damned to hell as well (or is that too much like modern life ;))?
The question of why the demon chose to possess Regan was addressed, at least in the book. An innocent, sweet child being so corrupted and twisted by evil was intended to cause despair and horror in people who would otherwise believe that good is more powerful than evil. It’s supposed to make people think that evil is overwhelmingly strong, that God himself can’t even save his own, and that even those who are good are not safe from it. I think that’s why it scared ME so much.
Father Dyer gave Karras last rites, so no, he was not in a state of mortal sin; he was absolved before death.
This is not true. Even Regan found ways to briefly take control of her own body, like when she wrote “HELP ME” on her own chest. Karras was a much stronger vessel than Regan, and he already knew exactly what he would do if the demon came into him. I do not find this to be a logical flaw in the movie.
Take into account that Regan unwittingly allowed the demon to take control of her, and that she is a child. Karras is a grown man, a Jesuit, and an exorcist. It doesn’t seem implausible to me that he could let the demon in, then wrest control of his body back from the demon long enough to jump out the window.
Am I being whooshed here? The thought The Grudge was terrible. The only movies that equal The Exorcist in scariness for me are Alien and slightly less so, The Ring.
Well, it’s two different approaches. IMHO, Regan’s situation is more realistic (relatively), but Damien is certainly more of a threat. For me, the “it could happen to me” idea is more effective than “that’s a bigger threat”. YMMV, of course.
