Watching Exorcist: The Beginning has a lot to do with your expectations. If you go looking for the nausea-and angina-inducing terror of the original, this may seem way too tame. But if you care to watch it after having sat through a Jeepers Creepers, it may come across as a decent enough representative of the B-grade horror flick genre.
Lancaster Merrin (Skarsgard), a former priest and archaeologist, is asked to join a British excavation team in Kenya where they've unearthed a Byzantine Christian church. The inexplicable element about the structure is its pristine condition, as though it had been buried the very day it was completed. The expedition awakens the deadly spirit sleeping within the sanctuary and the action heads towards a deadly massacre of innocent people, replicating the atrocities of the many wars our civilisation has been witness to. Ultimately, it's left to Merrin to confront the Evil.
The interesting segments are the theological debates on faith and the Almighty. The film also tries to connect the Devil with the brutality inherent in the contemporary world events. Why has Merrin ceased to be the man of God? He is constantly haunted by the memories of Nazi violence heaped on the people of his parish. The flashbacks show how he glimpsed the face of Evil in the concentration camps. The leisurely pace and the circular structure of the film ultimately reflect Merrin's own slow return to faith.
The cliches and stereotypes in the film are all obviously politically incorrect—the uncivilised, mumbo-jumbo practising African savages and the saviour whites. To look at it from the PoV of gender politics, there's a token good-looking, high cheek-boned woman for the hero to fall in love with in the wilderness. Stellan Skarsgard as the cleric facing a crisis of faith makes for a cool, different presence. Otherwise, not much is sought here by way of acting from any member of the cast, down to the bees, hyenas and the crows. The sfx in the climactic duel with the Devil is cheesy to say the least and the Devil's makeup render him more laughable than scary. On the face of it, the dice is loaded heavily against the movie.
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Courtesy: Film Information
