🎃 31 Days of Halloween – Day 21 🎃
The Exorcist (1973)
★★★★★ Watched 21 Oct 2025
Every time I revisit The Exorcist (1973), I’m struck by how little it resembles the loud, shock-oriented “possession movies” it inspired. Friedkin’s film is quiet, unnervingly real, and terrifying precisely because of that restraint. The use of silence, especially effective in an early medical scene, grounds the film in a sense of realism that makes the supernatural climax convincing in a way few horror films achieve.
I caught a screening of the original theatrical cut at a local repertory cinema, and (perhaps strangely), the most immediate point of comparison was the cinema of S. Craig Zahler, due to the lack of a musical score for most of the film. In particular, the aforementioned medical sequence, which in the theatrical cut had no supernatural aspect, reminded me of a scene in Zahler’s Dragged Across Concrete (2018). The bank robbery sequence is one of the most unsettlingly real I’ve seen in a film, and the complete silence, save for dialogue and ambient sound, mirrors Friedkin’s technique in The Exorcist. Both scenes are legitimately disturbing and demonstrate how nixing a traditional score can often make a scene far scarier than the use of spooky “movie music” would.
In George Lucas-esque rereleases, the power of the medical scene was among those reworked to edit in appearances from the demon Pazuzu. This viewing confirmed to me that the original 1973 cut remains the best presentation of The Exorcist by far. The “Version You’ve Never Seen” (2000) piles on unnecessary effects. Not just the demon’s face flashing onscreen, but the spider-walk and other additions that serve no purpose but to tear out the grounded realism until it feels more like a Conjuring sequel. Writer-producer William Peter Blatty was the true creative force behind the film—similar to Howard Hawks on The Thing from Another World (1951) or Spielberg on Poltergeist (1982)—having penned the original novel from a place of genuine Catholic faith. Blatty likely encouraged Friedkin to make the film as realistic as possible, while the agnostic director may have thought of it more as just a horror film in the following decades. The original cut is leaner and infinitely more effective.
Blatty’s writing is the main reason the film continues to impress. Viewers often assume Regan is possessed by multiple demons or even the Devil, but these contradictions are psychological warfare on the part of Pazuzu, meant to rattle Karras. The entity lies constantly, pretending to be stung by holy water, refusing to repeat a telekinetic trick, claiming multiple identities, yet Merrin calmly confirms, “There is only one.” It’s subtle writing that messes with audiences as much as Karras. Most effective on this front are the moments when the demon manifests as Karras’ recently deceased mother, supposedly damned to hell. These build on earlier scenes that humanize Karras by showing him caring for her.
Despite The Exorcist’s reputation as an unrelenting horror film, there’s humor sprinkled throughout. Actual, laugh-out-loud moments that remind you of William Peter Blatty’s background as a comedy writer. Between Kinderman’s affable small talk, Karras’ weary sarcasm, and even the demon’s obscene wit, the dark humor shows Blatty’s range.
Furthermore, the film breaks every screenwriting rule yet never drags. The opening Iraq sequence, disconnected from the main plot until Merrin reappears in the final act, lacks conventional dramatic conflict but establishes the film’s themes beautifully. With almost no dialogue, Friedkin and Blatty introduce Merrin as someone who has battled Pazuzu before, and set up the film's grounding in the eternal struggle between good and evil.
Ellen Burstyn’s performance remains one of the most authentic in horror history. Chris MacNeil isn’t a genre archetype, she’s a mother trying to make sense of a terrible situation, not a psychic or exorcist-in-training. The Exorcist: Believer (2023) shamelessly reduces her to a Tangina Barrons-like role, only to discard her once she’s in a brief scene so the studio could announce Burstyn was “returning.” But the less said about that turkey the better. A superior point of comparison would be Toni Collette as Annie Graham in Hereditary (2018), which is the only serious competition Burstyn has for top female performance in a horror film. Even then, Burstyn wins.
Amidst all its aesthetic virtues, it’s easy to forget that The Exorcist is fundamentally about faith and doubt. This theme is woven into its fabric with such subtlety that the film never feels written, just lived. If there is one criticism one could make of Blatty adding his own George Lucas-style codas to later releases of the film, it’s that this subtlety is undermined by the scene on the stairs in the director's cut. There, Merrin explicitly spells out the whole point of the film to Karras, rather than conveying it through the story. Blatty felt that, given the response to the original cut, audiences needed more assurance that the demon lost. But ironically, this on-the-nose addition was at the cost of the film's otherwise perfect dialogue.
Watching the theatrical cut again reaffirmed how Blatty's writing and Friedkin’s restraint make The Exorcist not just a genre classic. but a cinematic classic in general. Where later cuts clutter the film with effects and explanations, the original trusts the audience’s imagination. Or, for believers, their faith.
