The Exorcist

I only saw the film The Exorcist relatively recently, considering the fact that I am a pretty big horror fan and it is of course a classic. It was not at all what I had anticipated. Rather than horror movie, it was a film about a horrific situation. Several horrific situations, in fact, nearly every character has some kind of angst hanging over them. And then on top it there's a little girl who is possessed by a demon. No wonder it blew people's minds, I don't think there's any other movie like it.

The movie is also very true to the book, which shouldn't be too big of a surprise as Blatty wrote the screenplay. His skills might be better suited for the screen in fact, for he is not a great prose writer. At one point Chris McNeil touched someone “caringly.” When Damian Karras is first introduced, I think I read “despair” three times within the first page. Like, we get it, the guy's depressed.


(honk if you get that joke)

What Blatty is good at is dialogue. He's good at portraying how people actually waffle through conversations and interactions, occasionally charming and funny, but most of the time awkward. At points this was annoying, particularly with the police lieutenant Kinderman. Every character certainly had a distinctive voice, from the Engstrom's broken English, Chris' slangy hipster speak, Dyer the joker and Merrin the peaceful, ever-thoughtful exorcist. Karras out of the all them speaks the most like how most readers would, and as such Blatty invites you to see the whole episode through his eyes, from the perspective of a man who wants to believe in good and God, but only sees darkness and misery.

Rationality is Karras' protection, and pages and pages (shit, chapters really), are devoted to explaining Regan's symptoms as natural phenomena. Which left me a little confused - it was hard to tell what was legit medical science and what was just the doctors bulshitting, which might have been the point. Chris has a distrust of doctors so while she deeply wants to trust them because initially they are Regan's only shot at getting better, none of what they say makes any kind of sense and thus its intentionally obtuse. And from the religious perspective, telepathy and telekinesis are acknowledged by Catholicism as natural phenomena? Go figure. It's a bit like when I found out real estate refers to haunted houses as “psychologically affected.” It's ok to acknowledge freaky shit, as long as you dress it up as something scientific sounding.

What did kind of bug me was some of the psychology. Regan's condition kept on getting referred to as a split personality that could've been brought on by a sense of guilt about her parents' divorce. Now, I know that when this book was written not much was known about dissociative identity disorder, but still, it ain't caused by daddy issues. I know I probably shouldn't fault the book for that, but when those theories were being bandied around was when I most wanted to start skimming.

Like the movie, The Exorcist is subtle and quiet as the possession begins, giving you little peeks into Regan's deepening madness as the primary characters - Chris and Damian - go about their lives, oblivious. Then as things worsen, as the demon's mayhem completely overtakes the house overlooking M street, dominating the lives the five people living there, the tension becomes overwhelming. It's not horror movie what's-around-the-corner tension, its that's heavy sense of unease that can't be shaken. This past week I've been reading a lot of blog posts inviting people to tell their own personal encounters with the otherworldly in celebration of Halloween, and one person spoke of the 160-year-old definitely haunted house they used to live in as a kid. While the walls didn't drip blood or anything, everyone knew it was “affected,” they just didn't talk about it. They slept with their TVs on, they rewired the house so no one had to walk through a room in the dark, they avoided a specific room they called “the creepy room.” It wasn't until they moved that they realized how miserable they had been. That's the kind of atmosphere this book has.

As such, this doesn't have the same kind rising action most thriller's have. In fact, Merrin's sudden death, which happens off-screen, seemed to come out of nowhere. But the ending is very satisfying, and I like the way Blatty finished Karras' story. I liked this book, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it over the movie, but if you're curious it's certainly not a waste of time.

This is one of those books that the film is so well known that the book has kind of faded from the discourse a bit. This is a shame. Blatty's novel is an impressively ambiguous critique on faith vs science. I am probably a bit unusual in approaching this book without having seen the film. It is well written with a nice readable prose.

From what I have heard, the book manages to be significantly more ambiguous than the film. The film leaves you in little doubt that there is a devil possessing Reagan. The book is much more open to interpretation, and deliberately plays up that ambiguity - the conflict of science vs faith is central to the story being told here. The eeriness, tension and fear is all still here, but there is always an open question on whether this can be explained using science.

I do need to go and watch the film now - I honestly don't know how I have gone through 35 years of life without seeing it. I am intrigued to see how it compares with the novel, but the clips I have seen do seem to push the supernatural to the forefront compared to original novel

Horror must be the genre that gets outdated the quickest.
And this story is more than 50 years old.
This didn't scare me in the least. I don't know if it's empathy or imagination that I'm lacking. I fail to understand the scope of horror novels. I haven't read many of them, so it might be too early to judge.

A popular actress' daughter starts showing signs of demonic possession; doctors and priests take turns trying to find a cure. A murder or two to complicate it further.

1.There is a buildup to the revelation of the supernatural, which any reader would catch up on; like the beginning of a familiar song. The noises in the attic, the chill in the nape of the neck, a cold draught air. Same old same old.

2.There is the confusion ensuing, as to what box to check, science or paranormal.
This was funny, whether it was intended to be or not I'm not sure.

The girl rises above the bed, almost a foot, jerks in the air, spins like a top, arches with toes touching her forehead and falls back. And one doctor asks the other after around a 2 page description of similar stuff.

“I tHInk sHe cOnvULseD, don't you?”
“Yes, I think so”

Then comes the priest who can't make up his mind; with demons of his own.

3.Followed by acceptance and resolution.
Assisted by the deus ex machina priest who comes to meet his long lost friend.

I only have a distant memory of watching the movie years back and had forgotten the plot points. So it was pretty new to me. I might read this again, not for the element of horror, but the writing style.

There is a specific mood to the story that changes along the course of it.
The initial surprise/horror gives way to an emptiness and weariness in every character in the story, without forgoing the uniqueness of each of them. It doesn't feel like the author just conjured up ‘a priest', ‘a police officer' or ‘a manservant', for the sake of it. All of them though not contributing much to the course of the plot, have distinct personalities that are somehow peculiar and likable.

Ah! The flitting thoughts. From the weariness and despair that has consumed our characters, there are moments of escape; often by some idyllic scene as a simile.
“The psychiatrist seemed to be choosing his words as carefully as flat, round stones to skim over a pond”
It's like the other-worldly feeling at the top of the swing, right before you fall back to reality.

“......he ran back through Regan's symptoms, touching each like a schoolboy making sure that he taps every slat as he walks along a white picket fence”

And at times poetic

“He sat on the cot and drank in darkness. Wet came the tears. They would not cease. This was like childhood, this grief.”

I wish the origin of the villain was better elaborated. And it would be nice if the plot wasn't obvious from a mile away too.

Nevertheless, it's a timeless classic. You won't be disappointed unless you expect to be scared. So much for “the greatest horror story of all time”. Or was that the movie?