Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Exorcism’ on VOD, an Almost-Meta Horror Flick That Puts the Frock and Collar on Russell Crowe Again

We’ve had plenty of exorcist movies, so it’s kind of novel that The Exorcism ( now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video ) is a movie about exorcist movies. It stars Russell Crowe as an actor hired to play a priest in an exorcist movie that very closely resembles the greatest exorcism movie of all time, The Exorcist , so let’s watch our Ts and Ms around here lest we get confused. The nifty link here is, The Exorcism is directed and cowritten by Joshua John Miller, who was inspired by his father Jason Miller’s experience playing the priest in The Exorcist . We might not be watching this new film without the success of Crowe’s other exorcism movie, 2023’s The Pope’s Exorcist , which was enough of a modest box office success and Netflix hit, it inspired producers to pull The Exorcism , left incomplete after shooting in 2019, off the shelf for reshoots, a fresh coat of paint and what appears to be a film editor’s nightmare. It seemed so promising until the latter half of that last sentence, didn’t it? Well, now you know what it feels like to watch the movie. So it goes.

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The Gist: An admittedly impressive movie set: A man walks through an elaborate house, rehearsing his lines and practicing hitting his marks. He’s alone. Suddenly, the electricity surges, flickers, fritzes out. Something strange happens to him. Whatever it is, he’s dead now, and the production needs a new lead actor. Did anyone investigate what happened? Who knows. But the show must go on, right? Apparently so. Cut to Anthony Miller (Crowe), in his apartment, paging through the script on the eve of his audition. If he gets the gig, he’ll fill a dead man’s shoes and maybe cease to be a dead man walking. He’s damaged goods, see, and when his 16-year-old daughter Lee (Ryan Simpkins) arrives, fresh from being kicked out of school, we learn that Tony is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict who made some very ugly headlines when he left Lee hanging out to dry next to her dying mother as he tried to drink away the pain. This is why Lee calls her father “Tony” instead of “Dad,” and why things are instantly prickly when she walks into the room.

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One of Tony’s things is almost looking better when he lands the gig, his first movie role in a while now. I say “almost” because the real Pazuzu around here is the prickface film director Peter (Adam Goldberg), who says the nastiest things you could think of saying, then one-ups himself by taking it up another nasty notch. The film is titled The Georgetown Project , and although nobody says it’s explicitly a remake of The Exorcist , well, it sure seems like it’s explicitly a remake of The Exorcist . Subtitle: SHOOT DAY ONE. Since she got the boot from school, Lee tags along, working as a production assistant. She meets and befriends Tony’s co-star Blake (Chloe Bailey), while Tony has an interesting conversation with Father Conor (David Hyde Pierce), the legit priest who’s an advisor on the set. Tony gets all garbed up in the collar and frock and looks in the mirror and he’s already got a nosebleed. And at this point we’re all watching and quoting the ghost from The Amityville Horror : GET. OUT.

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Well, he doesn’t GET. OUT. He stays and guts it out, swallowing Peter’s bile, which he might as well be projectile-hurling right into Tony’s mouth. A real piece of work, this guy. Things at home aren’t great, and it doesn’t quite have anything to do with the father-daughter bitterness and tension. No, Lee finds her dad in compromised state after compromised state – sometimes rather drunk – which they first chalk up to the meds, but soon begin to wonder if it’s something more, you know, demon -y? Note, most of the weird stuff that happens with Tony occurs while Lee walks… very… slowly… down… creepy… hallways… and… staircases… in places that are in dire, dire need of one single god damn functioning stinking light fixture. By SHOOT DAY ELEVEN, we really want Peter the director to take a nice long headfirst bath in a tub of holy water. By SHOOT DAY FIFTEEN, Tony’s mumbling things in Latin. By SHOOT DAY EIGHTEEN will we get the CRACKITY BONES sound effect? CRACKITY CRACKITY CRACKITY BONES? Well, I ain’t sayin’. But yeah, probably.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I think I’ve mentioned most of them already. Guess I’ll toss The Exorcist: Believer and Evil Dead Rise on the pile too.

Performance Worth Watching: The Exorcism has such a eff-it-we’ll-piece-it-together-in-post-and-the-editing-room vibe, somehow, Crowe gets nudged aside for Simpkins, who sort of becomes the lead in the third act. And she ain’t half bad, all things considered. She certainly deserves a movie that makes some damn sense.

Memorable Dialogue: Peter the director cheekily meta-describes the movie when he seriously describes the movie within the movie: “It’s a psychological drama wrapped in the skin of a horror movie!”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Hoo boy, does this thing fall right apart to hell and damnation in the third act. Miller might be taking the Demon Alcohol angle thematically, or maybe the classic In Need Of Redemption tack, but the nonsense the film hands us in the third act obscures any such intent. I mean, it’s hard to discern where the characters are or what they’re doing or why they’re doing what they’re doing, but there’s definitely a lot of shouting and violence. Sussing out what this movie might be “about” while all this gibberdy-flibbet plays out is like assessing the symbolic significance of water while you’re drowning. You’re just trying to keep your head above water.

Which is too bad, because Crowe and Simpkins seem game for this, cultivating a relatively strong character base for whatever the script may throw at them – and it’s definitely a whole lot of whatever . Their diligent work places The Exorcism on the lower border of mediocrity instead of neck-deep in dreck. There are moments when Miller’s more than competent at creating mysterious and compelling atmospherics, even when the where’s-the-damn-lightswitch lighting feels a touch too contrived.

One senses Miller’s struggle to find a viable tone between dead-serious psycho-horror and self-referential Hollywood spoof, a problem that underscores some more obvious issues: jump-scare cliches, underdeveloped supporting characters, curious motives, instances of foreshadowing that go nowhere. It also fails to give us any closure with regards to Peter the director, who really deserved to enjoy a good, long stare at his own intestines. Is it a spoiler to say what a movie doesn’t do? I say no, technically speaking. But remember, if you don’t watch, you don’t get spoiled – and I really don’t think you should watch this movie.

Our Call: Good ideas, willing cast, beyond-lousy execution. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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