Social Contagion and the Enduring Horrors of “The Exorcist”
Nearly fifty years after its release, The Exorcist is still giving viewers nightmares. But what actually makes this seminal horror so effectively scary?
Feared and revered almost half a century after its original release, The Exorcist enjoys the kind of enduring reputation that most other movies can only dream of.
By the standards of modern horror, William Friedkin’s near-flawless adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s original novel might be considered tame. But I would argue that the people who would dismiss the film for not “being scary enough” probably don’t know what they’re talking about.
For me, horror is far more than just jumpscares and macabre visuals. Most contemporary genre releases such as 2018’s The Nun — an instalment in a wider and seemingly never-ending series of movies that more or less all do the same thing — boil down to a series of predictable jumpscares, which, more often than not, is a big ugly face, and the sound levels cranked up to thirteen.
This isn’t horror, more a cruel practical joke designed to spike stress levels, raise blood pressure, and turn poor audiences into ghosts quicker than they’d prefer.
Real horror, showcased with alarming effect in Friedkin’s seminal classic, is more about tapping into our base fears. Fear of life, fear of death, and fear of the unknown. The Exorcist did all three and then some.
There’s something to fear for just about everyone. The transformation of Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) from a blossoming young girl to a frothing, sore-ridden, crucifix-fucking hellspawn remains completely horrifying, even if the visuals aren’t quite as effective as they once were.
The journey of Father Karras — played to perfection by an understated Jason Miller — begins with him in the midst of a crisis of faith, worsened by his guilt over the passing of his mother. His battle and subsequent brutal sacrifice — a plunge down the now-famous steps of Georgetown’s Prospect Street — provide effective existential chills, particularly more so among more God-fearing viewers, aware of the Catholic church’s viewing of suicide as a mortal sin.
For me, as a staunch and unrepentant atheist, the true lingering terror of the film comes from elsewhere.
Ellen Burstyn’s harrowing performance as Regan’s mother, Chris MacNeil, a renowned actor of fame and power, is completely powerless to save her daughter from her terrible affliction, an impossible ailment so severe an entire community of expensive-looking medical experts are left with no option but to refer to the church once all scientific options have been exhausted.
Forget science not having the answers to life’s problems for a moment; as a parent, there is simply nothing worse than being unable to help your child.
Hands down, the worst of these powerless moments comes midway through the film during one of Regan’s many fruitless medical examinations. The bloodletting before her arteriogram taps into my own personal fears of bleeding, a feeling of dread elevated significantly by a brief moment where I was convinced the doctor’s needle was about to unleash the vile evil lurking beneath the poor girl’s rapidly mottling skin.
It doesn’t matter how many times I watch it. You know it won’t happen, as that’s not how the film unfolds. But in that moment, it feels like something that could actually happen. It is a truly disturbing moment, enhanced by uncomfortably real-feeling visuals captured courtesy of Friedkin’s unfiltered documentarian glare.
But is The Exorcist the scariest film of all time? For me, it’s easily up there along with the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Event Horizon (no, really) and Audition. My grandfather, the person solely responsible for my unhealthy obsession with movies, swears blind that it’s piss scary, the only film he's ever seen in his seventy-plus years of watching movies that made him check under the bed at night.
I think the film’s more visual horror aspects, while still eye-opening at times, are a little overrated, enhanced by the film’s incredible reception on release. Were people really scared to the point of losing bodily fluids and even consciousness in the auditorium? I imagine some were for sure.
But is it also possible that a lot of the fear surrounding The Exorcist was and remains to this day amplified by social contagion?
If everyone is telling you it’s the scariest thing you’ll ever see, and all the news is awash with reports of people in hysterics, gagging into barf bags and having literal heart attacks while watching it, you’re probably going to go in with a certain amount of trepidation, right?
I know I did when my granddad, literally the toughest sonofabitch I know and will probably ever know, told me it made him shit his pants. I was seven years old, by the way.
It’s not just The Exorcist that has been elevated to near-mythical levels by the sheer power of word-of-mouth over the years. Pascal Laugier’s exploitation horror Martyrs (the 2008 version, not the remake) remains entombed on a very short list of movies I don’t think I’ll ever have the guts to get around to.
Why? Because every single one of my friends who said they saw it — including the kind of people who eat Chicken Phall to say they can handle the heat — told me they couldn’t stomach the film’s legendarily demented content.
Even famed critic and horror aficionado Mark Kermode has described it as one of the most disturbing films he’s ever seen, an ordeal he said pushed him to such an extreme he considered tapping out before the end. And Kermode has endured virtually everything.
Regardless of how you or I may feel about its terrors — genuine or socially enhanced — The Exorcist’s bed-rattling, bile-filled reputation as a masterpiece of cinema remains chillingly intact.
December will officially mark the fiftieth anniversary of its unleashing, a demon of a film whose contents and impact on our society will continue to be speculated on for many more years to come, both by film lovers and those with a passion for understanding what makes us tick.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to watch a video of someone reacting to Martyrs for the umpteenth time. Wish me luck.
Originally published at michaelkenny.uk
