30 in 30: A MONTH OF HORROR. THE EXORCIST
DAY 21
THE EXORCIST (1973)
A turning point in the history of horror.
So yeah, we’re talking about THE EXORCIST today. There’s probably nothing that has not being said about this movie already. But we are going to try anyway. Let’s try to figure out what makes this movie so scary. What made it into an icon.
For those who don’t remember, THE EXORCIST is described by Google as:
One of the most profitable horror movies ever made, this tale of an exorcism is based loosely on actual events. When young Regan starts acting odd — levitating, speaking in tongues — her worried mother seeks medical help, only to hit a dead end. A local priest, however, thinks the girl may be seized by the devil. The priest makes a request to perform an exorcism, and the church sends in an expert to help with the difficult job.
The last couple of days we’ve been talking about nihilistic horror, about meaningless suffering and the existential-silence behind the trivial pain of being. But horror is not always nihilistic, sometimes not being alone is way scarier.
Author Arthur C. Clark said:
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and THE STRANGERS touch upon the first part of the premise, a godless world; THE EXORCIST deals with the second. What would happen if you saw something that restructured your outlook on existence?
Most people today are practical agnostics; I think that makes it easier for them to accept the idea of nihilistic suffering. But when an event suggests the existence of a divine, or higher power, our perspective must be recontextualized.
Strangely, movies like THE EXORCIST are life-affirming. After all, they deal with an entity trying to corrupt a “human soul.” This means there’s inherent value to it. It says that humans have meaning to them. The horror comes from the absolute certainty of something way bigger than us. Of demons, gods, and angels that turn us into ants besides them.
Through most of the movie we don’t see the priests fighting the demonic entity. We look at the characters as they come to grip with the existence of something higher than themselves. It is the destruction of a human-centric point of view that scares not only the characters but the spectators.
Mystery is where everything scary hides. Discovering a door to something otherworldly gives our imagination free reign, now laws we once considered as absolutes are at the mercy of something bigger, something unknown.
THE EXORCIST is scary because it is about the loss of control of humans in human affairs. It puts the characters of the film at the feet of the greatest mystery of existence.
TOMORROW: EVENT HORIZON (1997)
YESTERDAY: THE STRANGERS (2008)
