The Exorcist

2.50
    The Exorcist
    1973

    Synopsis

    When a charming 12-year-old girl takes on the characteristics and voices of others, doctors say there is nothing they can do. As people begin to die, the girl's mother realizes her daughter has been possessed by the devil--and that her daughter's only possible hope lies with two priests and the ancient rite of demonic exorcism.

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    Cast

    • Jason MillerFather Damien Karras
    • Ellen BurstynChris MacNeil
    • Linda BlairRegan MacNeil
    • Max von SydowFather Lankester Merrin
    • Lee J. CobbLt. Bill Kinderman
    • Kitty WinnSharon Spencer
    • Jack MacGowranBurke Dennings
    • William O'MalleyFather Joseph Kevin Dyer
    • Barton HeymanDr. Klein
    • Peter MastersonDr. Barringer

    Recommendations

    • 100

      Chicago Sun-Times

      Rarely do movies affect us so deeply. The first time I saw Cries and Whispers, I found myself shrinking down in my seat, somehow trying to escape from the implications of Bergman’s story. The Exorcist also has that effect--but we’re not escaping from Friedkin’s implications, we’re shrinking back from the direct emotional experience he’s attacking us with. This movie doesn’t rest on the screen; it’s a frontal assault.
    • 100

      Chicago Tribune

      This jolting tale of a 12-year-old girl possessed by the devil, her desperate movie actress mother and the two priests called in to exorcise the demon, actually seems a deeper movie now -- more intense, less formulaic or shallow. Yet it's also retained all its original hypnotic narrative grip. [2000 re-release]
    • 100

      Rolling Stone

      There's something elemental about The Exorcist, even with the new hopeful ending that betrays the bleak original. [2000 re-release]
    • 91

      Entertainment Weekly

      Here, in paranoid, bad acid trip form, is the real birth of girl power. [2000 re-release]
    • 88

      New York Post

      Director William Friedkin, (“The French Connection” and this year’s “Rules of Engagement”) has always been a provocateur, a master of the shock. But his very lack of subtlety is both the strength and weakness of The Exorcist in the 21st century. [2000 re-release]
    • 80

      Variety

      Just as some of the footage deepens what is already there, additions in final reel, though closer to Blatty’s wishes, restate the obvious or add a feel-good patina which pushes the film closer to our own audience-pleasing period than the more daring early ’70s. [2000 re-release]
    • 80

      Washington Post

      A museum piece, something to be enjoyed for its historical value. [2000 re-release]
    • 75

      New York Daily News

      The Exorcist is still shocking, but mostly because of its graphic, anti-religious language. [2000 re-release]

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