Studio:   Vertical/Miramax
Director: Joshua John Miller
Writer:   M.A. Fortin, Joshua John Miller
Producer: Kevin Williamson, Ben Fast, Bill Block
Stars:    Russell Crowe, Ryan Simpkins, Sam Worthington, Chloe Bailey, Adam Goldberg, Adrian Pasdar, David Hyde Pierce

Review Score:

Summary:

A disgraced actor's relationship with his estranged daughter is tested further when he becomes demonically possessed while playing a priest in a horror movie.

Synopsis:

Recently expelled from her Catholic high school, 16-year-old Lee Miller arrives in New York to stay with her estranged father Anthony 'Tony' Miller, an alcoholic actor whose troubled past has damaged his professional reputation. Hoping for a comeback that will also make Lee proud of him, Tony prepares for a remake of "The Exorcist" codenamed "The Georgetown Project" after the lead role of Father Arlington became available following the mysterious death of original actor Tom. Tony gets the part after the film's director, Peter Dunn, coaxes out a moving rehearsal by forcing Tony to tap into the trauma of being a drug addict, widower, absentee father, and former altar boy who was sexually abused by a priest.

To celebrate the start of production, Tony hosts a cast and crew party where Peter introduces him to Father Conor, a priest working on the film as a consultant. Meanwhile, Lee has a bonding moment with Brooke Holloway, a pop singer and actor playing the Regan role, and the two of them take a romantic interest in one another that develops while Lee works as a production assistant on the movie.

Following a first day of shooting where small yet odd events occur on set, Lee finds her father in a sleepwalking trance she shakes him out of. After an intense second day where Peter further pushes Tony to pull from his traumatic past, Tony seeks solace in his trailer where he finds a crucifix and a script scrawled with worrisome notes he doesn't remember writing. Later that night, Lee finds her father behaving strangely again.

On the eleventh day of shooting, Lee walks in on a dailies screening where she overhears Peter disparaging Tony as an unreliable drunk delivering a poor performance. Father Conor stays behind in the screening room for a heartfelt conversation with Lee about her father and their religious beliefs.

Lee spends an evening with Blake. When she returns home, Lee is disturbed to find her father inexplicably covered in blood.

With Tony's mental state and physical condition continuing to worsen, Lee consults Father Conor on the fifteenth day of shooting. Lee plays a recording of her father's strange ramblings, which Father Conor identifies as broken Latin referencing the demon Molech. Father Conor initially assures Lee that the movie is merely influencing Tony's mindset due to method acting, but he later becomes concerned when he does his own research into the demon.

On the eighteenth day of shooting, the crew is shocked to see Tony suddenly contort backwards, seemingly become possessed, and then repeatedly bash his head against a table. Peter discusses recasting Tony's character with Tony's co-star Joe, however, Tony later breaks through a mirror to kill Joe while possessed.

Back at Tony's apartment, Lee and Blake begin kissing as they comfort each other over everything that has happened. Still possessed, Tony interrupts to violently attack his daughter. Blake knocks Tony off of Lee. Tony then falls out a window.

Lee and Blake accompany Father Conor as he attempts to perform an exorcism on Tony on the production's "cold room" set. When Lee enters the room, she finds Father Conor and Blake in entranced states while her possessed father taunts her. After reading Bible passages, Lee begs the demon to leave her father. As the demon continues claiming Tony isn't worth saving, Lee burns Tony's face with a crucifix, which releases Blake and Father Conor from their trances.

Resuming his exorcism, Father Conor forces Tony to confront the trauma of the abuse he suffered as an altar boy. The demon transfers from Tony to the priest. With his faith renewed, Tony begins praying out loud using dialogue from the movie. Father Conor starts thrashing violently. Tony then stabs the priest with a crucifix and he bursts into flames.

Finally freed from the demon's influence, Tony tells his daughter he loves her. Lee goes on to pursue her creative interest in writing.

Review:

It wasn't just you. I too, and undoubtedly many others, did a double take when I saw Russell Crowe holding a crucifix while wearing a priest's collar on a poster for a movie titled "The Exorcism." Didn't I already see this when it was previously called "The Pope's Exorcist?" There's no way there could be two different, totally unrelated films starring Crowe as a Catholic clergyman releasing within one year of each other, right?

Funnily enough, principal photography on "The Exorcism" took place in 2019, a full three years before "The Pope's Exorcist" (review here) shot its first frame of footage. COVID-19 apparently prevented pick-ups and reshoots, so additional filming ended up delayed until 2023, which opened a window for "The Pope's Exorcist" to sneak to the finish line first. Imagine the steam coming out of executive ears in "The Exorcism" office when they realized they were now stuck in someone else's shadow, forced to market a second movie where Crowe douses demons with holy water. They must have overturned as many tables as "The First Omen" producers did when they found out they were releasing just two weeks after "Immaculate" (review here).

Adding to the amusement of this convoluted conflict, Russell Crowe technically doesn't play a priest in "The Exorcism." He plays Tony Miller, an alcoholic actor whose self-destructive behavior has damaged his professional reputation and estranged him from his teenage daughter. Tony hopes to win back both with a comeback role as the Father Merrin character in what's heavily implied to be a remake of "The Exorcist," even if "The Exorcism" cheekily avoids directly mentioning the William Friedkin classic out loud.

Joshua John Miller directs "The Exorcism" from a script co-written with his partner M.A. Fortin. Miller is the son of actor and playwright Jason Miller, who famously played Father Karras in "The Exorcist" and "The Exorcist III." Even though the elder Miller filmed the first movie before the younger Miller was born, if anyone can tell the story of a performer parent dealing with personal demons while also fighting fictional ones, it's Joshua John Miller, who frames a big bulk of the movie from the perspective of Tony's troubled teen daughter Lee. Tony and Lee even maintain Miller's surname, indicating there may be more than a bit of truth to the tale being told here.

While he may have the personal experience to draw on, something Joshua John Miller evidently does not have is the legal right to reference "The Exorcist." Codenamed "The Georgetown Project," everyone in "The Exorcism" knows they're remaking "The Exorcist." Everyone in the audience knows it too, what with the way characters, sets, and key scenes echo "The Exorcist" exactly. Nevertheless, the fictional cast goes out of its way to not say the title by name, thereby ensuring Miller isn't bothered by a phone call from Warner Brothers attorneys.

The deeper Tony digs into playing this priest, the deeper he's forced to draw from past traumas like drug addiction, abandoning his dying wife, and being abused as an altar boy to pull out the performance his demanding director desires. Soothing self-doubt through alcohol, Tony starts succumbing to something more sinister, as he slowly seems to become possessed by the same demon from the script. Watching Tony's mental and physical states gradually worsen puts incredible stress on Lee, who works on her father's film as a P.A. after being expelled from high school. Once his behavior escalates into truly horrific experiences, Lee worries there may be no chance to save her father at all.

Although "The Exorcism" starts on a stinger of an actor's death that's suggested to be supernatural, and includes the murder of another actor stabbed with mirror shards and strangled by Tony's possessed hands, the movie is less about a haunted film set and more of a character study exploring a shattered psyche trying to be pieced back together like Lee and Tony's broken bond. That's my take, at least. The film jumps between so many disconnected sequences and disparate thematic threads, it's possible "The Exorcism" wasn't sure what kind of movie it wanted to be until it eventually found this finished cut in the editing room. Whether that's due to the long pandemic break making actors unavailable for additional filming or some other circumstance entirely, I don't know. I do know "The Exorcism" feels like it intended to be an introspective, personal project from Joshua John Miller, and even though he's the director, someone higher up seemingly said, "Nah, recut this into a routine demonic possession flick instead."

You can tell there must have been retooling by how headlining talent like Sam Worthington, who receives third billing, only appears in short, disposable scenes anyone who pays SAG dues could play. Then there are names like Samantha Mathis, who doesn't even have a card in the opening credits, who barely appear at all. I couldn't tell for sure if Mathis plays a producer or a script supervisor since she only appears in two quick clips. I wonder if her first scene was included because that's the only one where she speaks a line, and producers didn't want someone to recognize her in the second scene and wonder why she didn't have any dialogue.

The film's final third in particular is choppier than beachside waves during a hurricane. As with the initial confusion over Russell Crowe appearing in two exorcism movies, you're likely to scratch your head at how the fictional film's entire cast and crew witness Tony contorting backwards yet attribute it to alcoholism, how authorities don't get involved in the case of a gruesome death that couldn't possibly be accidental, or how Tony falls from a window several stories up and the movie suddenly leaps to a real priest and two teens performing Tony's exorcism on a film set where no one else is around.

Miller also slips in a side romance that doesn't sit quite right. Brooke, a pop singer turned actress, plays the Regan role in the fictional film, and she and Lee take a mutual interest in one another. The problem is, Lee is established as 16 years old. I suppose Brooke could theoretically be the same age, though that seems unlikely, especially since she asks Lee back to her own private place. The camera cuts away after Lee excitedly accepts Brooke's invitation, so we don't see what happens next, yet it's hard not to distractedly think, "Hold on, is she hooking up with a minor?"

With erratic storytelling that can't settle definitively on what story it's telling, I can't recommend "The Exorcism" to anyone other than those who are ultra-curious about the concept, or diehard devotees of anything tangentially related to "The Exorcist." At the same time, it's difficult to dismiss the movie with negativity since it seems like a sincere endeavor from Joshua John Miller, who probably set out to exorcise personal demons with a semi-biographical story paralleling his own history with his father. We may never know why that original vision was so heavily compromised. I think a midrange score of 50/100 acknowledges the underlying effort behind the screenplay's intentions while representing the disappointment of a film that doesn't fully deliver as a fright film or as a fractured family portrait.

Review Score: 50