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I enjoy horror movies enough that I figured I should take time out to watch some of the classics. One of the big titles on that list is The Exorcist from 1973.
The Exorcist revolves around the possession and subsequent exorcism of a young girl named Regan played by Linda Blair. Regan's possession is a gradual process, with hints at objects moving and her ability to communicate with a ghost early on, but eventually builds to a full blown head-turning, vomit-spewing, backwards-talking possession.
As this is a very old movie I really wanted to focus on the specific things I enjoyed about this movie. For one, Linda Blair is an absolute star. The subtlety of Regan's transformation from a sweet young girl to a vile, cursing demon was beautifully portrayed through Blair's shift in tone of voice and the hardness of her eyes. I really enjoyed her performance and I imagine it wasn't easy as a child actor to be under the amount of makeup she had by the end of the movie and to deliver such a ruthlessly aggressive demonic performance.
Another thing I wanted to note was the great practical effects work in this movie. Regan's transformation was awesome, from her skin getting paler to the boils and lesions eventually covering her face and hands. The brutality of the demon's affect on Regan was clear and believable, and I feel without that the sympathy we feel with Regan's plight would be diminished. Additionally, the movement effects with Regan's body flinging around and the bed rocking and shaking, even Regan's head spinning 180 degrees, were on-point.
I really liked a lot of the characters in this movie. The character I want to point out specifically was the one I called the 'cool priest', Father Damien Karras, played by Jason Miller. He's a very handsome, very smart character who is grappling with his decision to join the church instead of becoming a renowned psychotherapist. However, even after entering the church, he maintains his scientific mind and thought processes, and his reluctance to perform an exorcism on Regan and instead approach the situation from a psychiatric angle from the jump was a nice touch.
I think the movie could have easily had him jump right in and eagerly perform the exorcism, but his decision to first collect evidence before even bringing the matter to his higher-ups was cool to see and made me like him even more. Miller played him excellently and his story with his mother really hit through his performance.
Overall, though this is technically a horror movie, it's not actually that scary by 2022 standards. However, I definitely recommend it as a film outright. It's well shot and well acted, and a classic everyone should take the time to check out.