Forget Ex 2, give this a shot.
I had the misfortune of watching The Exorcist 2 a couple months back, if you can be bothered the review is here.
The film was boring, lazy and in no way a worthy successor to the original film, so the writer decided enough and took the reins for The Exorcist 3, both writing the screenplay and directing the film, and he did a far better job.
The problem faced by this film is twofold, firstly regardless of how good it is people will still say that “sure it’s better than 2, but that’s not hard”, the other problem is that there was no way that it would top “The Exorcist”, still a classic 30+ years after release.
And of course here we are, a film far superior to the god-awful second, but not quite in the same league as the first, though precious few films are.
William Peter Blatty the writer of the original and this, and the director of 3 keeps a consistently creepy tone, there isn’t much violence shown onscreen or even after the event, though there are some pretty graphic descriptions. The only variations are the first couple of minutes and the ultimate showdown finale, which veer dangerously into cheesy territory.
Take the intro as a prime example, after some ominous nothings a church door flies open and leaves and debris fly in, which apparently awakens a statue of Jesus on the cross, who then cries?
Seriously, this really happened. “Naughty leaves, you woke Jesus!”
I can’t help but feel that somehow a studio got involved and told the director “look we like what you’ve done, but you have to open the film with a bang and close it with a big wild showdown. Neither change helped the film but it doesn’t really detract too much.
The film is filled with realistic, normal everyday looking characters who talk in a fairly realistic way, given what occurs around them of course.
The basic plot is different to both the original and #2, no Reagan here, although she is very briefly referenced early on. A cop named Bill Kinderman, who was good friends with the priest from the first film, is now good buddies with another priest, Father Dyer who is a little morose about the state of the world. They obviously have known each other for some time and discuss their situations freely.
He tells the priest of a recent killing, a young teenage boy is decapitated and the body butchered in ritualistic fashion, shortly after another priest is murdered while hearing confession also in graphic fashion.
Given his occupation and what he sees everyday Bill has a pretty wacko dream, and I mean wacko. Want proof? Not only does the dream sequence have some pretty out there stuff going on, it also has Fabio and Samuel L Jackson as bystanders and a young Patrick Ewing as the Angel of Death.
Bill wakes up to find out that Father Dyer is dead in hospital, and not just dead, drained of blood dead.
Bill immediately orders the hospital shut down, much to the chagrin of the hospital management. He then explains the nature of a case from 15 years prior, the case of the Gemini Killer.
The Gemini Killer was a serial killer who performed depraved, unworldly executions of innocent and somewhat random victims, Bill goes on to describe specific details that were not released to the public, but which are now being performed on the new victims, the boy and priests.
Bill believes that somehow the Gemini Killer is back.
Lo and behold a patient in the same hospital claims to be the killer, and in a one on one chat he tells Bill in no uncertain terms that this is the case, and describes several things that only the killer would know. Not only this, but to Bill from time to time the patient appears to change from the actor Brad Dourif to Father Karras from the original film, this would obviously be a bit unnerving, on top of this his voice alters periodically into a demonic rasp.
To describe what happens after would start giving the game away, nonetheless Bill and the Gemini Killer are destined to come face to face, Brad Dourif gives a powerful performance which could have easily been cartoonish and hammy in lesser hands.
There are two really memorable scenes in the second half of the film, one has echoes of events in the first but is pretty jaw dropping and unexpected when it happens, the second is pretty well known and occurs over a patient two minute single shot when a nurse in the hospital is doing her rounds.
I remember a few years back there were two Exorcist prequels being released at the same time, so they altered the names a little.
I bet Blatty wishes that he could retitle The Exorcist 2 to anything but, as The Exorcist 3 is the only worthy sequel to the masterful original, and a strong movie in its own right.
Final Rating – 7.5 / 10. Don’t write everything in this series off after the second horrible rubbish. This is good stuff.
