USA, PG-13, 119 m, 2005
The Exorcist meets Inherit the Wind. This marginally engrossing docudrama stars Tom Wilkinson as a priest charged with negligent homicide after the exorcism of a mentally unhinged college student goes terribly awry. Laura Linney plays the legal beagle that takes the priest’s case, and though she’s a non-believer, she whips up a major hubbub when she argues before the court that Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter) was not a victim of religious malpractice, but of an actual demonic possession. The flashbacks depicting Emily’s mental unraveling (or spiritual molestation, depending on what you believe in) give us a sense of how The Entity might have played if it hadn‘t been made by a hack. But this picture, directed by newcomer Scott Derrickson, probably has more in common with The Forgotten, which offered up similarly disconcerting ambiguities. © Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.
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