‘Exorcism of Emily Rose’ a superfluous courtroom melodrama

“The Exorcism of Emily Rose” is one of those rare films that not only discourages its audience from looking deeper into it, but also expends its energy in making you so confused and intimidated that you won’t dare try to put a single thought into it. It begins with a stark title explaining “This film is based on a true story”—one of those self-important messages that tries to deflect criticism because, hey, this really happened, so shut up. (As always, Hollywood liberties are readily ignored.) Then, ten minutes into the film, you discover that you have been misled by its marketing campaign: this is barely a horror film at all—it’s a courtroom drama. Perhaps it’s all some hopeful ploy to avoid comparison to the obvious predecessor, “The Exorcist.” In truth, “Emily Rose” wants to present the same philosophical dynamics as “The Exorcist,” but in doing so it literalizes and vulgarizes them.

Erin Brunner (Laura Linney) is a hot-shot agnostic attorney who’s hungry for the title of partner of her law firm (is there any other kind in the movies?). Without hesitation, she takes on the media sensation of the moment by representing Father Richard Moore (Tom Wilkinson), a priest being put on trial for negligent homicide. The victim in question was Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter), a nineteen-year-old girl supposedly inflicted with a bad case of demonic possession; Moore was her local parish priest and acted as her exorcist. The ultimate question—is there something greater that Moore could have done to prevent her death? During the trial, the priest is determined only in “getting Emily’s story out to the world,” Erin unbelievably finds herself using the exorcism as fact to defend Moore the prosecuting attorney (Campbell Scott) does all he can to discredit them and the witnesses narrate occurrences in Emily’s life as they happen in flashback (blech).

“The Exorcist” achieved its brilliance by presenting a world where conventional beliefs are turned upside down, and atheists and agnostics are challenged to assess their beliefs in the face of evil. Unbelievers feebly grasp at the straws of their beliefs when malevolent, unexplainable forces descend upon them; meanwhile, modern science and medicine are treated as a medieval church, jealously guarding its flock in an attempt to ward its followers away from its primary enemy of thought, that being faith. It seems that “Emily Rose” is aiming for these ideas, but its fatal flaw is in its presentation: it’s a legal “thriller” filled to the brim with atheist academics and scientists who are shuffled onto the stand to spout out all the logical fallacies of the exorcism story (before they’re all shot down, of course).

By casting the atheists as one-dimensional egomaniacs and antagonists to the kindhearted Father Moore’s case, the film concludes that secularism is wrong, wrong, wrong, without any genuine reason—it’s like a debate with someone whose primary argument is that you suck. The film makes an eleventh-hour plea that everyone should keep their minds open to the possibility of other beliefs; however, the film has already expressed its own standpoint, and hypocritically refuses to be ambiguous: its flashbacks, presented as the gospel truth, pummel our senses with the concept that Emily Rose was not just possessed by the devil himself, but also that she was practically a sainted martyr-in-training. Such treatment reveals the film’s tortured, holier-than-thou sense of who’s right and who’s wrong.

And, stripped of all pretenses, there’s barely anything left worth discussing. The horror is standard; Jennifer Carpenter’s titular Emily Rose is literally given nothing else to do beyond shrieking, convulsing and cursing in Aramaic. A little unsettling, but nothing that Linda Blair didn’t perform with more frightening gusto. The drama is standard; it seems that miraculous case-saving surprise witnesses are always doomed to death before they can testify. Cliché pap, self-important drivel, sound and fury, signifying nothing, you know the drill. Just stay away from it.