Which exorcist is scarier

Exorcist: The Beginning is the result of Morgan Creek Entertainment's loss of faith in the commercial viability of the version filmed by director Paul Schrader more on that below. The studio shelved Schrader's take, hired Harlin and screenwriter Alexi Hawley to overhaul the movie Schrader had turned in, and the drastic results produced by Harlin and Co.

Both Harlin and Schrader's films focus on this but diverge in notable ways when it comes to telling Merrin's prequel story. For Harlin's version, Merrin, haunted by the events of WWII and having left the Catholic Church to pursue archaeology, somewhat begrudgingly agrees to join a dig in East Africa which isn't going according to plan.

While there, Merrin discovers the location is home to a centuries-old church that houses the spirit of the demon Pazuzu first introduced in The Exorcist. The demon eventually possesses someone close to the dig and Merrin finds himself confronted with true evil, eventually donning his robes and performing an exorcism. Harlin's version of this Exorcist prequel undoubtedly delivers on what Morgan Creek was ostensibly looking for. The story forgoes anything too deeply intellectual, preferring to stay steeped in mood and action and unafraid to be a little sexy or subversive.

It's clear Harlin was given carte blanche to do his thing — entertain without worrying about making too much sense — while re-filming Exorcist: The Beginning. However, it's very clear there is a much headier movie lurking underneath the surface the remnants of Schrader's version and Harlin's version is ultimately too disjointed and superficial to offer anything of value to this franchise at the time of its release in The other Exorcist prequel, director Paul Schrader 's Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist , is the superior prequel — but it's still not a terribly good movie.

Dominion was shelved by Morgan Creek as the studio scrambled to turn out a prequel they felt would play well with audiences enter Renny Harlin , with this version eventually released one year later in While neither Dominion nor Harlin's version take any great pains to stick to the Exorcist lore laid down in the first two movies — the young child exorcised by Merrin in Exorcist II is not the same child in Dominion or Exorcist: The Beginning — it certainly feels thematically and tonally aligned with the first two movies.

However, this time around he's leading the dig which uncovers the ancient church containing the spirit of Pazuzu, thus adding some more emotional investment into the events that follow. Merrin is marked by the grief he harbors over one particular event from the war and Schrader is actively interested in spending time digging through Merrin's past and how it affects his time in East Africa.

In this way, Dominion earns its place in The Exorcist franchise. However, Schrader and this particular horror story. While the movie succeeds in the more intellectual discussions supporting the story, Dominion is devoid of any real or effective scares.

Even the exorcism in the final act is more like a stage play than anything resembling the kind of special effects-laden showdown we might expect from a horror movie in Alas, Schrader did his best, but even making the better of two prequels does mean this movie is a true success.

ES Money. The Escapist. The Reveller. The Optimist. ES Best. When The Exorcist was in the early stages of production, Friedkin met with the Rev. Robert J. You might assume the Roman Catholic Church would be viscerally opposed to seeing one of its more arcane rituals turned into fodder for a horror movie, but Friedkin says many church officials supported The Exorcist at the time.

The director claims church officials later told him they credited the film for inspiring new applicants to be priests and nuns. After all, the priests are the heroes of the story. Of course, not every cleric was a fan. This film was made by a believer. Certainly a great many moviegoers believed it. Stanley Kubrick once told Stephen King that he thought The Shining was an optimistic story — because it suggested there really was life after death.

In a similarly twisted way, The Exorcist has the same message about belief in God, of course the devil is part of that package, too. The main character is a year-old girl, an innocent corrupted by outside evil. From his office at Fifth Avenue in New York an ironic address if ever there was one , Friedkin and Blatty had given up and started auditioning actresses who were in their late teens.

Then year-old Linda Blair and her mother came in without an appointment, hoping to get a shot at the part. What kind of things does she do? And she pushes a man out her bedroom window. The uncanny nature of a young girl creating these demonic sounds and being able to rattle a huge wooden bed with so much force simply fills the audience with fear of the power of the demon inside her. Did Regan do it to herself?

Is it a cry for help from the little girl? Or did the demon do it from within her? Is the demon the one asking for help? The film is full of subliminal messages that are used to heighten the fear, but one of those is particularly strange and incredibly terrifying. You can pause on it on the DVD version, and without knowing this was one of the director's ways of sneaking a subliminal message into the film, you could easily be convinced that your DVD player was possessed.