The Exorcist

I only saw the film The Exorcist relatively recently, considering the fact that I am a pretty big horror fan and it is of course a classic. It was not at all what I had anticipated. Rather than horror movie, it was a film about a horrific situation. Several horrific situations, in fact, nearly every character has some kind of angst hanging over them. And then on top it there's a little girl who is possessed by a demon. No wonder it blew people's minds, I don't think there's any other movie like it.

The movie is also very true to the book, which shouldn't be too big of a surprise as Blatty wrote the screenplay. His skills might be better suited for the screen in fact, for he is not a great prose writer. At one point Chris McNeil touched someone “caringly.” When Damian Karras is first introduced, I think I read “despair” three times within the first page. Like, we get it, the guy's depressed.


(honk if you get that joke)

What Blatty is good at is dialogue. He's good at portraying how people actually waffle through conversations and interactions, occasionally charming and funny, but most of the time awkward. At points this was annoying, particularly with the police lieutenant Kinderman. Every character certainly had a distinctive voice, from the Engstrom's broken English, Chris' slangy hipster speak, Dyer the joker and Merrin the peaceful, ever-thoughtful exorcist. Karras out of the all them speaks the most like how most readers would, and as such Blatty invites you to see the whole episode through his eyes, from the perspective of a man who wants to believe in good and God, but only sees darkness and misery.

Rationality is Karras' protection, and pages and pages (shit, chapters really), are devoted to explaining Regan's symptoms as natural phenomena. Which left me a little confused - it was hard to tell what was legit medical science and what was just the doctors bulshitting, which might have been the point. Chris has a distrust of doctors so while she deeply wants to trust them because initially they are Regan's only shot at getting better, none of what they say makes any kind of sense and thus its intentionally obtuse. And from the religious perspective, telepathy and telekinesis are acknowledged by Catholicism as natural phenomena? Go figure. It's a bit like when I found out real estate refers to haunted houses as “psychologically affected.” It's ok to acknowledge freaky shit, as long as you dress it up as something scientific sounding.

What did kind of bug me was some of the psychology. Regan's condition kept on getting referred to as a split personality that could've been brought on by a sense of guilt about her parents' divorce. Now, I know that when this book was written not much was known about dissociative identity disorder, but still, it ain't caused by daddy issues. I know I probably shouldn't fault the book for that, but when those theories were being bandied around was when I most wanted to start skimming.

Like the movie, The Exorcist is subtle and quiet as the possession begins, giving you little peeks into Regan's deepening madness as the primary characters - Chris and Damian - go about their lives, oblivious. Then as things worsen, as the demon's mayhem completely overtakes the house overlooking M street, dominating the lives the five people living there, the tension becomes overwhelming. It's not horror movie what's-around-the-corner tension, its that's heavy sense of unease that can't be shaken. This past week I've been reading a lot of blog posts inviting people to tell their own personal encounters with the otherworldly in celebration of Halloween, and one person spoke of the 160-year-old definitely haunted house they used to live in as a kid. While the walls didn't drip blood or anything, everyone knew it was “affected,” they just didn't talk about it. They slept with their TVs on, they rewired the house so no one had to walk through a room in the dark, they avoided a specific room they called “the creepy room.” It wasn't until they moved that they realized how miserable they had been. That's the kind of atmosphere this book has.

As such, this doesn't have the same kind rising action most thriller's have. In fact, Merrin's sudden death, which happens off-screen, seemed to come out of nowhere. But the ending is very satisfying, and I like the way Blatty finished Karras' story. I liked this book, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it over the movie, but if you're curious it's certainly not a waste of time.