The Exorcism

Moloch Or Velocet

The Exorcism
Directed by Joshua John Miller
USA 2024ish
Miramax
UK cinema cut.

Well now, I made the mistake of listening to a review of The Exorcism a little while after I bought the ticket and immediately regretted the purchase... because people are just trashing this thing. Not for any particularly good reason it turns out. I found the first three quarters of this movie to be pretty good. I think this hinges on something a friend once said to me. She said, whether a film has a bad or good ending is what tricks the audience into whether they think they’ve seen a good or bad film. Now, I certainly don’t subscribe to that theory for myself but I can see how, certainly in this case, this may well be true for a lot of people.

I’ll get to the ending soon enough but this film has a troubled history. Most of it was shot around five years ago... is my understanding. I think someone then deemed it unreleasable and just put it into storage... never to see the light of day. But then a funny thing happened... remember the Russell Crowe exorcism film from last year, The Pope’s Exorcist (reviewed by me here). Well it was a big hit and deservedly so (would like a sequel at some point please). So this movie was kind of ‘finished up’ and then earmarked for streaming but, I dunno, I’m guessing after Covid and the writers and actors striking, the studios are in short supply of stuff to put in cinemas so... yeah... here we are.

The film has a lot of interest if you are a fan of the original movie adaptation of The Exorcist. For starters, Friedkin’s movie starred Jason Miller as the young priest of the movie... and this film is both written and directed by his son, Joshua John Miller. So he would know something about the filming of The Exorcist which is handy because, well, this film stars Russell Crowe playing an actor (um... Tony Miller) who is brought out of a failed career ending in tragedy and drinking rehab, to star in the same role as Jason Miller, in a remake of The Exorcist. Although The Exorcist is not actually name checked, certain things like the title of the film within a film, The Georgetown Story and even more blatant pointers assure that 99% of the audience watching this will realise the characters are remaking The Exorcist. And even the director character is pretty badly behaved... maybe not so badly behaved as Friedkin allegedly was but, yeah, he’s not nice to his lead actor.

So the film is about Crowe coming onto the movie after the previous actor, seen dying from a demonic presence on the set in a pre-credits scene, has to be replaced. His estranged daughter, played by Ryan Simpkins, is also at hand, suspended from school and she, in an attempt by both of them at reconciliation, becomes his PA for the shoot, while staying in his apartment.

And I have to say, that’s all pretty interesting stuff and, yeah, I’d say about the first three quarters of the movie are pretty well put together... with a pop star who gets ‘together’ with the daughter played by Chloe Bailer, odd appearances from Sam Worthington and David Hyde Pierce as the ‘priest consultant’ who finally has to try and exorcise Crowe as he gets taken over by the demon Moloch, over the course of the shoot.

Alas, the last twenty minutes is awful. I have no idea how Crowe’s character is still alive after he appears to kill himself jumping out a window and the bait and switch nature of the final, rushed exorcism, where the original plot is parodied so Crowe can perform the exorcism on the priest instead, is just totally ridiculous. As is the bizarre epilogue of a happyish ending... it just all feels wrong after a certain point.

Still, The Exorcism isn’t as bad as some critics are making out and, yeah, it’s not great either. But it is interesting and sometimes that’s enough.

Wrath Of The Titans

Manic Minotaur

Wrath Of The Titans USA 2012

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman

Playing at UK cinemas now

Hmmm... you know I loved Ray Harryhausen films as a kid... loved ‘em... and still do. The original Clash Of The Titans, however, left me feeling a little chilly. I’m going to have to grab a copy of that last one at some point to see if I still feel as disappointed with it as I did when I was a kid or whether my tastes have mellowed over the years.

The remake from a couple of years ago, however, I really enjoyed.

I know I’m in a minority here but I felt it was one of those rare remakes which improve over the original material somewhat, although I have to admit I did miss Bubo the mechanical owl a tad... he was relegated to a joke for a few seconds in the remake (although I have to equally point out that it was a brilliant little reference for us “kids” who are old enough to have seen the original in the cinema). I even liked the ending to that last one... Andromeda was somewhat a non-character I felt, but the ethereal Gemma Arterton sacrifices her immortality (if i’m remembering this right) and comes to earth to “settle down” with Perseus at the end of the movie... and Gemma Arterton is clearly a foxy lady and deserved that ending with her character.

In the sequel, Wrath Of The Titans, Arterton was unavailable to take on the role due to scheduling conflicts and so, much to my disappointment, we join Perseus more than a decade later as he is just putting the last couple of stones on Arterton’s character’s grave. He is now bringing up his young son Helius (which actually does mean son in Greek, it turns out... Thanks, tonights episode of Eggheads!) on his own, after he has promised his dead wife to keep him out of trouble.

After refusing a request for help from his father Zeus on a flying visit, Perseus is forced to go to the aid of him anyway, in that roundabout gather and rescue quest kinda way, after his home village is invaded by some kind of giant, fire-breathing bird. Pegasus arrives to take Perseus to enlist the aid of Andromeda and the secret demi-God she has inadvertently imprisoned, and it’s off on a quest for “Weapons of the Gods” and business as usual.

Andromeda herself is a little more palatable this time around as she’s played by tough beauty Rosamund Pike, replacing Alexa Davalos. However, although she’s definitely got a little more to do this time, including a share of the fighting duties, it has to be said that she’s kind of wasted in this role. This really needed to be a much more meatier part for an experienced actress like Pike to get her teeth into. She does what she can in the role but the character is just not present enough for her to really do anything too interesting with it.

This film starts off quite well, though, and the first half an hour or so, which includes Perseus’ battle against the aforementioned giant, fire-breathing bird and a chase and bash sequence involving a few cyclops’ and their traps in the forest... although the cyclops here are just not as terrifying as the ones in The Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad, I should point out.

After these initial sequences though, things do seem to go down hill a little, which is a shame because the director, Jonathan Liebesman, previously directed Battle: Los Angeles which I thought was a great movie. Alas, while this movie tries hard to keep the pace going... it does tend to get dull and lifeless towards the end... the new John Carter movie walks all over this film in terms of heroic-fantasy as an all encompassing genre umbrella which can include things like Greek mythology themed peplum such as this one.

I was told that Bubo was in this one more but it turned out to be a bit of a fake. He is in it for just a few more seconds than the last movie... but only as an inanimate object who is being deferred to in conversation. Frankly, this appearance in no way matches the charm of the previous movie and was a huge disappointment to me. Seriously, writers and directors of pseudo-Titanic movies... I want my R2D2 substitute, mechanical owl flapping around in the air and making funny noises please! Is that really too much to ask in these days of CGI? This is just not on!

This sequence is followed by a fight with a minotaur which is decidedly lacking in interest and was a character who was surprisingly easy to beat. And then we have a big battle at the end of the flick between hell’s armies lead by Chronos against the small, Greek armies. Now Chronos is a pretty good idea as volcanic inspired monsters go and looks quite impressive throwing all that lava around... but, again, like the infinitely more impressive and real life special effect that is Rosamund Pike, it gets kind of weighed down tonally against all the other stuff that’s going on and ends up looking a bit mediocre in comparison.

There’s no real problem with the editing on this one... it’s all fairly competently put together, especially during the action sequences which are all well handled in terms of being easy to understand. You won’t be inundated with edits which are too fast to figure out whats going on.I think sometimes that action directors/editors employ that tactic deliberately because they’ve not remembered to get all the footage they needed to make it understandable... Wrath Of The Titans suffers from no such trouble, I’m pleased to say.

Alas, although Wrath Of The Titans (and its poor 3D transfer which wasn’t as good as the previous movie either, in my humble opinion) is certainly a rip-roaring adventure, I’d have to conclude that there’s certainly a lot more roaring than ripping going on in this one... I did get really bored with it towards the end and almost nodded off in a couple of sections. I don’t think the directing’s to blame on this one either... I thought the scripting could have done with a little rewriting and tightening in places. It was like the movie was almost split into two halves by different writers and the second half got the short end of the trident. If you liked the previous movie you probably won’t hate Wrath Of The Titans and may be willing to forgive it a lot of things (including Perseus’ hair cut) but I suspect you won’t be singing its praises for long either. Despite it’s famous flying steed, bizarrely coloured black instead of white, this movie doesn’t really have the wings it needed.