Director: Joshua John Miller
Writers: M.A. Fortin, Joshua John Miller
Stars: Russell Crowe, Ryan Simpkins, Sam Worthington
Synopsis: A troubled actor begins to exhibit a disruptive behavior while shooting a horror film. His estranged daughter wonders if he’s slipping back into his past addictions or if there’s something more sinister at play.
What if the very act of filming a narrative about demonic possession was enough to unearth some demons? Literal and otherwise. What if cursed film sets were real? What if you wanted to make a version of The Exorcist but Blumhouse had already bought the rights? Enter The Exorcism, a movie so irredeemably awful that the biggest reaction it will provoke is wondering how Joshua John Miller’s personal therapy session got greenlit.
Anthony Miller (Russell Crowe) is a fallen from grace actor with an uneasy relationship with his daughter Lee (Ryan Simpkins). After years of booze and drugs and the death of his wife, he is trying to stay sober and has a new acting job on ‘The Georgetown Project’ – where he will be playing the priest. All he wants to be is ‘good – if he can be.’
Playing Father Arlington comes with baggage for Anthony. There’s something that doesn’t sit right with him with religion (his altar boy past), and he’s coming in after the death of another actor in the role. However, the film is also his shot at redemption after his very public stint in rehab. It could also be a chance for him to connect with Lee who is hired as a PA on the set.
As the director, Peter (Adam Goldberg) aggressively points out, Tony is irredeemable like his priest character. A man who is being eaten alive by guilt. Pete is pushing Tony to admit to his sins through his character for an authentic performance – but perhaps his sins are so deep in his psyche that he will always be suspect to darkness. It’s clear where The Exorcism is leading – Anthony is the vessel.
“It’s a psychological drama wrapped in the skin of a horror film,” states Pete (redundantly) about the film he’s directing. The same could be said of The Exorcism if it managed to make a lick of psychological sense beyond the obvious parallels of Tony’s guilt and trauma making him susceptible to demonic influence. The demon Molech is evoked, and Tony is possessed. Apart from Lee and her new girlfriend, Blake Holloway (Chloe Bailey) who is the star of the in-universe movie, everyone is non-reactive about it. Even the on-set priest Father Conor (David Hyde Pierce) seems preternaturally calm about the whole situation.
Written and directed by Joshua John Miller, the son of Jason Miller who played Father Karras in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. There was a chance that Miller could put his stamp on the franchise which shadowed his Pulitzer Prize winning father’s career. Instead, what the audience is given is a dramatically and atmospherically inert piece of cinema centered around Joshua John Miller’s issues with addiction, abuse, and uncertainty about both religion and the entertainment business.
Sixteen-year-old Lee is expelled from school. She’s also a queer playwright who is struggling to get her father’s attention although he loves her. Anthony Miller has addiction issues and was both damaged by the Catholic church and somehow redeemed by it. Fame is bad, but failure is worse. Instead of making a wildly inconsistent and dull film, Joshua John Miller could have kept that in his semi-autobiographical novel and flop movie The Mao Game.
Russell Crowe gives what he can with the role to create some level of gravitas – he’s not giving a bad performance; he just has little to work with around him. Sam Worthington is in the film for a few forgettable scenes – one which is clearly not meant to be forgettable, but audience investment level dried up before he got his four minutes. It is difficult to evaluate Ryan Simpkins’ performance beyond ‘underwritten secondary protagonist there to react at things’ – as an emotional anchor she’s got nothing because she’s given nothing.
The best way to describe The Exorcism is as a bunch of nothing. How a film which is obviously incredibly silly hobbles itself with self-seriousness is astonishing. At least the Friedkin adjacent The Pope’s Exorcist starring Russell Crowe and his vespa and awful Italian accent was funny at times. The Exorcism doesn’t even manage a jump scare. The tone and script are all over the place never resting somewhere interesting. The irony of David Hyde Pierce’s Father Conor being around to keep everyone from freaking out is at least mildly amusing because of the comatose non-reaction of the crew on set.
Overly serious, dull, and most unforgivably, not even vaguely menacing. The Exorcism is a somnambulant walk through a ‘universe’ which is begging everyone to just stop trying to resurrect it in some manner. Skip The Exorcism and watch or rewatch the Joshua John Miller penned Final Girls instead.
