Movie Review: The Exorcist III (1990)
You’d probably expect a third Exorcist movie to be awful, especially following that second one. I know I did, when I first saw part of this movie on television. I was expecting to find it funny. You don’t make sequels to serious, legitimate dramas.
But when I saw part of this movie on TV as a kid, it scared the crap out of me. I didn’t see all of it, because it was so late at night and I must have fallen asleep. But I’ve been wanting to see it ever since.
And it turns out that I wasn’t the only one scared by this movie. A lot of horror fans really like this movie (not that they find it as good as the first one, of course), and it has one jump scare that people seem to always talk about as being one of the best.
This movie definitely comes from a more legitimate source than you might expect. William Peter Blatty, the screenwriter and producer of the first movie, as well as the writer of the original novel, writes and directs this. And the cast is pretty good, with Academy Award winner George C. Scott (Patton, Dr. Strangelove) playing the character that Lee J. Cobb had played in the original. The movie also has Jason Miller returning to the series, and a new addition in Brad Dourif (Child’s Play, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).
Father Dyer also returns as a character, though he’s no longer played by an actual preist, but instead Tony Award winner Ed Flanders.
The movie plays out like a disturbing and dark mystery more so than the other movies in the series. There are a series of ritualized murders that have occurred around Washington, with connections to the notorious and supposedly dead serial killer, the Gemini Killer.
You don’t see that much, but the movie manages to be pretty disturbing. When you do see something, it’s very scary, and the movie has atmosphere to spare.
The movie’s a little silly at times, with some dream sequences that include Fabio as an angel.
The movie definitely has a strange plot, with the Gemini Killer (Brad Dourif) occupying the body of Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller). It’s implied that the Devil himself oversaw this, not Pazuzu as in the second one, but it’s not made 100% clear. Karras did die in the first movie, of course, but if you remember, he was fighting off possession as he jumped out the window, so I guess it makes sense that the Devil would still be there in some capacity.
The scenes with the Gemini Killer cut back and forth between Dourif and Miller, but the film doesn’t really imply that there is any kind of physical change. This appears to just be something done for the audience.
Brad Dourif’s performance is really remarkable. He’s a great actor, and he’s just so intense in this role. It’s a fairly small role, as it turns out, but it’s a very effective performance.
There’s a lot to like in this movie in terms of its atmosphere, its performances, and its score by Barry De Vorzan. It’s a bit anticlimactic, but it is an effectively frightening picture.
It tries to be something very different, just as the second movie did. Unlike the second movie, though, you can follow the plot, and it’s pretty well made.
Rating: 6/10
