It was in 1973 that The Exorcist premiered. Since then, horror cinema has changed forever; the audience had just seen the scariest movie of all time.
Word of mouth increased its success and the mysteries surrounding the film finally gave the work the label “damn”. At the same time, it became the most profitable horror film in history until 2017, when it was surpassed by It: A Thing.
- The exorcist has a special place in the collective imagination.
- More than 40 years have passed since its inception and.
- Even today.
- It is considered the largest horror film.
- For what it represented and what it proposed.
It was also the first feature film of its kind to compete for the Oscar for Best Picture, although it only won best screenplay and best soundtrack.
William Peter Blatty was the author of the novel of the same name who inspired the film and took over the writing of the Oscar-winning script. However, despite the undeniable success of The Exorcist, the people involved in the film were not so lucky.
The actors were to be invited to other films, but instead many of them ended up getting into B-movies, such as Linda Blair, the girl who gave Regan life; others, such as Swede Max Von Sydow, were a little luckier: he became a familiar face who ended up participating in current series, such as Game of Thrones, and films such as Star Wars and Isle of Fear.
The exorcist caused such fury that huge lines were formed to see the film; people left the cinema vomiting, some even passed out. Was it really such a scary movie? The truth is that, right now, seeing The Exorcist is not the same experience that it should be in the premiere of the feature film, and surely we would have no problem falling asleep after seeing it. It has the best horror movie of all time aged badly. ? Does it still have its essence?
The use of special effects, makeup and all the ornaments on which The Exorcist is based caused terror in the 1970s, but today it is not. Accustomed to a cinema that abuses special effects and infinitely more realistic makeup techniques, it’s hard to see The Exorcist as the horror movie it was in its day.
Other films of the same genre, with fewer effects and fewer supernatural events, have survived a little better in time, a good example is psychosis, which we now consider closer to suspense than to terror, but which still manages to scare and disturb certain scenes.
The problem with The Exorcist is that, while it is a controversial issue, it is no longer innovative. After their debut, countless evil children filled the theaters, increasing our tolerance. When we watch a horror movie, we know what we’re going to find and we know that at some point, we’ll carry more or less elaborate fears.
Therefore, if we look at The Exorcist from the current perspective, we will find a film that can provoke more laughter than fear. Green vomiting, little Regan’s obscenities and impossible neck movements these days provoke laughter or laughter. , at most, disgusting.
This fact happens not only with The Exorcist, but with horror cinema in general, we are so used to it that everything is a source of grace, it is cinema, so it is not real.
Although this may seem impossible, exorcisms are currently performed; we should not understand as exorcisms only the thing related to Catholicism, since exorcisms are present in different cultures.
However, this is virtually unknown today, and even for the Vatican itself it is difficult to determine whether a person really needs an exorcism or not, so most commonly they are psychiatric problems. Medical, technological and scientific advances have had. increase in public skepticism.
Accompanying these advances, the Internet has appeared and, with it, we can simply launch anything that makes us curious on Google. The information is a click away and we can demystify or contrast it.
In this way, we are faced with a world in which there is almost no place for the paranormal, for mystery and even for fantasy Are we more rational?Perhaps, or simply, the most logical answers are within our reach.
Although The Exorcist does not cause the same terror as in the 1970s, the truth is that it continues to grow as an eternal horror film on most charts.
A multitude of mysteries surrounded his images: fires, accidents, William Friedkin’s obsession with a priest to bless the team, subliminal messages and countless conspiracy theories.
Some of these rumors have epped like gunpowder, increasing the aura of terror and “cursed film” like never before. But the truth is that many of them were not even real, although in fact there were several accidents and, perhaps, many coincidences. All this helped create the atmosphere the film was looking for: viewers were ready to be afraid, to see something that would cause disgust, but at the same time, it stoked the imagination.
The exorcist puts us in a game with a constant dichotomy between good and evil. When we witness evil, we indirectly believe in good. Both appear from the beginning, long before the start of possession. Evil travels through the city, pursues Father Merrin and takes possession of the innocent Regan.
It is important that horror movies connect with the mind of the viewer, subject him to psychological game and make him believe what he sees.
Regan is a lonely girl, who has no friends, who has no father figure and her mother is very busy, the girl represents innocence, but she is involved in evil: the evil of adults, of the world and, finally, of the devil. Father Karras embodies two dichotomies: faith versus science, good versus bad. He is a psychiatrist and priest and is to blame for his mother’s death.
These similarities to reality, empathy and known space (today’s city) arouse the fear of the viewer’s approach. Fear is a physiological response that reminds us of our survival. A horror movie can speed up your heart rate and increase adrenaline levels, but it’s a controlled fear.
The scariest scenes are those in which things don’t appear much, such as the demonic face that appears for a few seconds or the scenes of Karras’ mother. Music also plays a fundamental role, creating a perfect atmosphere.
The exorcist puts us in the ’70s, and that’s fear in the ’70s, Paul J. Patterson of the University of San Diego warns that fear is variable, in the past monsters like Frankenstein were terrifying, but today the terrifying goes through other paths. Fear is a cultural thing, characteristic of a moment and a place; generates rejection and fascination almost simultaneously.
Faced with a market saturated with horror films, we find a criticism that takes us into a dark context. It is very difficult to make a good horror movie; viewers want to be afraid, but provoking them is not so easy, which is why L’Exorciste will always have a special place in the genre, because it is a film that, at least in its time, has achieved everything it wanted.