Oh man, so get this. I was out in the woods hunting for Pazuzu as I’m wont to do, when suddenly I was possessed by The Deceiver. Now I’m drinking wine and screaming and I can’t remember a thing. Do you remember what happened in The Exorcist: Believer?
Pop Quiz Hot Shot!
1) The film opens with a real life event. What event?
2) Years later Victor and Angela Fielding are living in Atlanta. The day of his daughter’s disappearance she takes what from the belongings of her late mother?
3) How long are the girls gone for and what were they doing in the woods?
4) Who is involved in the final exorcism?
5) What is the one weird trick that The Deceiver pulls on our heroes right at the end of the exorcism?
Bonus Question: Let’s reboot this thing. What does Pazuzu want this time?
Answers
1) The 2010 Haiti Earthquake. I think Victor is there with his heavily pregnant wife for a job (not a vacation) but I could be wrong, but that at least explains why they were so irresponsible as to be there while Sorenne is so very very pregnant.
2) A purple scarf. This becomes a touchstone for the father and daughter later in the movie and was to be a piece of the puzzle of why they were in the forest in the first place. Victor has a super duper healthy relationship to the possessions of his late wife though so he naturally explodes and takes the scarf back angrily.
3) Three days. Get it? The resurrection of Christ. Now, does this mean this is a super secret Easter film? I don’t think so, but that would have been fun. Regardless, they went into the forrest for a seance to try and commune with Sorenne, Angela’s late mother. That is why Angela took the scarf, she wanted a possession of her mother’s for the seance. So … Victor probably screwed up by taking it back huh?
4) A little tough, but I’ll try. First, obviously Victor and his next door neighbor Ann, a nurse who in the past was to be a nun but got pregnant and got an abortion and thus dropped out of the clergy. Victor’s other next door neighbor is also there representing alternative religion and he’s brought along a healer of sorts similar to the one that blessed Sorenne in Haiti years prior. For the other girl her parents are there and so is their pentecostal pastor, they come across as fairly evangelical with the church not baptizing people until adulthood for example. Eventually a last minute call up came through for an actual priest who pretty much immediately has his head turned around and dies. Chris McNeil was supposed to attend, but she injured herself with a serious case of getting-stabbed-in-the-eyes-with-a-crucifix.
5) Turns out if you choose to save your daughter it is Opposite Day and instead you doom your daughter. Dangit! It truly is that one weird trick The Deceiver doesn’t want you to know! But Victor somehow intuited it, so he kept his dumb mouth shut.
Bonus Answer: Let’s see. In the exorcist books / films it felt more like a trickster demon preying on the weakness of faith and humanity. I didn’t look up the second book at all, but let’s go off the first. We got science v faith and faith wins out with Pazuzu being a demon unleashed on a little girl. In the third film we got a serial killer used by Pazuzu to enact revenge on Kerras and those he loved, which I think probably has to do with humanity’s darkest inclinations. So we jump to the current day. Boston. A priest enters the lobby of the capitol building. There he meets a young councilman and explains that something devastating is happening in his nearby school. They go and find the school almost empty. He explains, the children have all been falling ill. Two are already dead. Others have been pulled out. And no one can figure out what is happening. A young doctor accompanies them and explains that the symptoms are somewhat reminiscent of the Regan case, although more scattered and random among the afflicted. Investigating, the councilman finds that Father Merrin was once a teacher there long ago, but he was fired for suggesting … unorthodox practices to students. Exorcisms. The firing came after a mass panic in which a student-led exorcism was conducted and a boy seriously injured. The symptoms occurring seem to be rather similar. As the case proceeds a suggestion from the clergy that Merrin was a satanist prompts the politician to begin a run for governor on a platform of routing satanists out of our schools and government. He’s so charismatic, it is unbelievable. He’s winning! As the investigation proceeds the priest starts to unravel the mystery and just as he realizes that Merrin was not guilty … but rather it was the higher ups at the school who suggested the exorcism to the student. That student? The doctor, who the councilman now asks to run as Lieutenant Governor. Just as the priest is about to blow the whistle the doctor shows up and murders him. You see? The doctor is the presumptive anti-christ, and will (eventually) ride the coattails of the young councilman to a world government to destroy the world.
It is called Exorcist: Revelations. In the end I think you run it as a trilogy. With the second a further investigation as the councilman and doctor run for president together, with a Church of Merrin being established to try and fight the demon Pazuzu in his quest for domination (Exorcist: Dominion) and the final being armageddon as the councilman is murdered, and the doctor begins the worldwide religious purge, and fighting the Church of Merrin who must return to Pazuzu’s homeland to find and destroy his source of power (Exorcist: Armageddon). Like, sure, it sucks, but it seems in line with the idea of The Exorcist as mostly a metaphor for the dichotomy between faith and non-faith in modern society.
Bad Movie Twins 