The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

Directed by Scott Derrickson. Starring Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson, Campbell Scott, Jennifer Carpenter, Mary Beth Hurt, Colm Feore, Joshua Close, Duncan Fraser, J. R. Bourne, Kenneth Welsh. [PG-13]

An intriguing if not quite successful approach to a possession/exorcism thriller: move the “scary” stuff to a series of extended flashbacks while setting the main narrative in the aftermath as a courtroom drama with the exorcist, Father Moore (Wilkinson), on trial for the negligent homicide of the victim, Emily Rose (Carpenter). Laura Linney plays the priest’s agnostic attorney, who grows to at least believe in the conviction and faith of her client, although expert testimony insisting Emily was merely epileptic and psychotically disturbed doesn’t bode well for her case. The legal proceedings are too cursory and “juiced up” to really engage with the tangled morals and beliefs at play in an insightful way, while the exorcism flashbacks recycle a lot of the horror sub-genre’s familiar images and shocks amid a few unintentional laughs—hey, who let the kitties in here? Dependable performances from Linney and Wilkinson (and a physically formidable one from Carpenter) encourage the viewer to stick it out to the end, but for a movie that tries to root itself in real-world truth, credibility is severely compromised by how many liberties are taken with this purely fictional version of the actual events (the all-American “Emily” is based on a young German woman, Anneliese Michel, and the church later retracted its claim that she was possessed during her sixty-seven exorcisms performed by multiple Roman Catholic priests). Henry Czerny and Shoreh Aghdashloo appear in one scene apiece.

48/100