Culture | Film You’d be forgiven an eye-roll or two on hearing of yet another ‘exorcisty’ film. Five follow-ups to The Exorcist , William Friedkin ’s unholy grail of a classic from 1973, and countless unrelated exorcism-titled movies have nearly all been diabolically disappointing. If that eye-roll morphed into a full-on, Regan-esque head spin on learning Russell Crowe is the star of another one – The Exorcism – that would be understandable too.
An Oscar-winning colossus following 2000’s Gladiator, Crowe’s box office seems to have fallen off a cliff – having him on a poster now feels like a guarantor of mediocrity (see: 2014’s Noah, 2020’s Unhinged, 2022’s Poker Face). However, cast out those demons, because The Exorcism is a juicy, spiky plunge into B-movie hell and Crowe (who seems to be on a devilish roll after last year’s The Pope’s Exorcist) is on dementedly entertaining form. We open with a priest babbling Latin mass outside a house that looks remarkably like the one in The Exorcist.
As he enters, it’s clear he’s an actor running through lines; and as he exits his life on the upper floor of this film set, it should be obvious to horror nerds that this is a take on the legend of “The Exorcist Curse” (there were fires and injuries on the set of the original film, and nine apparently connected deaths, including that of actress Linda Blair’s pet mouse). Enter Crowe’s Anthony Miller, a washed-out actor recovering from drug and alcohol .
