The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

The Exorcism of Emily Rose arrives dressed as a horror picture and spends most of its runtime as a courtroom procedural, which is a bold costume choice for a film about a teenage girl who contorted and starved to death. Scott Derrickson and Paul Harris Boardman built the screenplay around a deliberate ambiguity, pairing a believer with a skeptic so that neither the demon nor the diagnosis wins cleanly. Father Moore reads Emily's letter. The prosecutor reads the medical charts. The jury splits the difference and asks for time served. It is a tidy arrangement, and it keeps the sermonizing at a low simmer for most of two hours.

Laura Linney carries the proceedings as Erin Bruner, an agnostic attorney chasing a partnership she eventually refuses. The film grants her competence and a conscience, which is a character choice more than an argument, and it never pauses to congratulate itself for either. The ensemble is white by default, the era's standard, with Shohreh Aghdashloo arriving late as an anthropologist to explain that other cultures also believe in possession. Her testimony is cross-cultural texture, not a thesis on race, and the prosecutor dismisses it as nonsense anyway.

What the film declines to do is instructive. There is no economic grievance beneath the archdiocese's wish to avoid scandal, no environmental lament, no affirmation of the body beyond the horror of its contortion. Epilepsy and schizophrenia surface as competing forensic explanations, puzzles for the jury to weigh, not identities to be honored. The courtroom format invites dueling monologues, and the anthropologist's cultural survey has the cadence of a lecture, but the film's refusal to pick a side keeps the preaching moderate. It is a sober, well-acted exercise in ambiguity, and it leaves the audience to do the believing.

Thematic tags: true_story, box_office_number_one. The film is loosely inspired by the case of Anneliese Michel, and it reached number one at the domestic box office during its opening weekend. It won no Academy Awards, and it is not a sequel, remake, superhero picture, or adaptation of a published book.

{"review": "The Exorcism of Emily Rose arrives dressed as a horror picture and spends most of its runtime as a courtroom procedural, which is a bold costume choice for a film about a teenage girl who contorted and starved to death. Scott Derrickson and Paul Harris Boardman built the screenplay around a deliberate ambiguity, pairing a believer with a skeptic so that neither the demon nor the diagnosis wins cleanly. Father Moore reads Emily's letter. The prosecutor reads the medical charts. The jury splits the difference and asks for time served. It is a tidy arrangement, and it keeps the sermonizing at a low simmer for most of two hours.\n\nLaura Linney carries the proceedings as Erin Bruner, an agnostic attorney chasing a partnership she eventually refuses. The film grants her competence and a conscience, which is a character choice more than an argument, and it never pauses to congratulate itself for either. The ensemble is white by default, the era's standard, with Shohreh Aghdashloo arriving late as an anthropologist to explain that other cultures also believe in possession. Her testimony is cross-cultural texture, not a thesis on race, and the prosecutor dismisses it as nonsense anyway.\n\nWhat the film declines to do is instructive. There is no economic grievance beneath the archdiocese's wish to avoid scandal, no environmental lament, no affirmation of the body beyond the horror of its contortion. Epilepsy and schizophrenia surface as competing forensic explanations, puzzles for the jury to weigh, not identities to be honored. The courtroom format invites dueling monologues, and the anthropologist's cultural survey has the cadence of a lecture, but the film's refusal to pick a side keeps the preaching moderate. It is a sober, well-acted exercise in ambiguity, and it leaves the audience to do the believing.", "thematic_tags": ["true_story", "box_office_number_one"]}