Exorcism Movies
Depending on your tastes, exorcism movies can be the most terrifying of all the horror subgenres. When done right, they combine the psychological chills of the unseen and unexplained with the visceral delights of jump scares (those scary images that jump out from nowhere) and genuinely gross and grotesque imagery and effects.
Trouble is, they’re often not done right or rely too much on formulas made successful in the best of the genre. Plus, the good ones often result in bad sequels (The Exorcist II: The Heretic, anyone?). So, with Halloween around the corner and the new The Exorcist Fox TV series getting solid reviews, now is the perfect time to celebrate the best we’ve ever seen from exorcism movies.
We hope there are no head-spinning, body-contorting horrors in your dreams after you read about the 15 Most Terrifying Exorcism Movies Of All Time.
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Start Now15 BEETLEJUICE
Is Beetlejuice(1988) really terrifying? Not necessarily. But Tim Burton’s 1988 career-defining masterpiece is definitely an exorcism movie – after all, the title character (Michael Keaton) is a “bio-exorcist,” which is kind of the opposite of a traditional exorcist, a ghost procured to rid a home of people. It’s just a little quieter about being an exorcism movie than the rest of the films on this list. But on the more traditional front, there is the scene where interior designer Otho tries to perform a seance but accidentally exorcises Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara (Geena Davis, who happens to star in the new Exorcist TV series).
And, although it’s a dark comedy, it’s the “dark” part of that equation that lands it a spot on this list. There’s definitely a creep factor running throughout the film. There’s the scene where Adam elongates his face, pops his eyes out and sticks them on his fingers. Or when Betelgeuse turns into a giant, creepy rattlesnake and drops a man from a good 20 feet up. And how could we forget the classic “Banana Boat Song” scene, where you get a good jump scare when their food pops out of their bowls and grabs their faces?
14 THE DEVIL INSIDE
We cannot in good conscience come out and tell you that The Devil Inside (2012) is a great movie. The solidly spooky trailer teased a film that promised to be a lot better than it actually turned out to be, but it was a classic case of the trailer giving away some of the movie’s best moments.
In particular, the best thing about the film is the creepy work of actress Suzan Crowley, who, surprisingly, has done very little in the years since this movie's release. She plays Maria, the possessed and institutionalized mother of the main character, Isabella. Isabella teams up with a filmmaker making a documentary about exorcisms, and Maria was previously locked up after killing people during an exorcism performed on her. When Isabella visits her mother, she’s practically catatonic, and Crowley plays it with eyes that are a cross between dead and quietly evil, as she shows her daughter the cross-like scratches on her arm and inside her lip. The Devil Inside is a movie with a few nice, creepy moments of possession, but is otherwise lacking in engaging plot and characters.
13 THE RITE
Like The Devil Inside, The Rite (2011) is not a particularly great movie, but it still has some solidly creepy moments for fans of possession and exorcism movies. Plus, it stars Sir Anthony Hopkins as Father Lucas, and he’s just always a blast to watch. He displays a calm wisdom as a time-hardened exorcist that lays a solid foundation for the film. And, set at the Vatican, the movie offers all the Catholic mysticism you expect from an exorcism flick.
Inspired by a true story, the plot follows Michael (Colin O’Donoghue), a reluctant priest who is pushed into training to become an exorcist. Also like The Devil Inside, it’s a movie with more than one exorcism on more than one possessed person, and there is a bit of a twist buried in that statement that we’re not going to reveal, but it certainly gives Hopkins more room to shine. Creepy highlights include a possessed teenage girl upchucking huge nails, but overall, it depends more on atmosphere to give the audience its chills.
12 CONSTANTINE
Loosely based on the DC comic book series Hellblazer, the 2005 film Constantinestars Keanu Reeves as John Constantine, a cynical sort who also happens to be able to see angels and demons on Earth and has the power to exorcise evil demons. He also knows he’s doomed to spend eternity in Hell thanks to a near-death experience he had as a teenager following a suicide attempt. It's not a particularly easy life for poor John.
It’s a different kind of exorcism movie, though, because rather than possessing humans (though that does happen), a lot of the demons (and angels) are seen in their actual form. Plus, it’s more action movie than a real horror story. Still, it’s a unique take on the exorcism subgenre and there’s some intriguing performances from Reeves and Tilda Swinton, who plays an androgynous angel named Gabriel. The big-budget film bombed in the U.S. but more than made back its budget thanks to the worldwide box office, and ultimately led to the NBC TV series of the same name that lasted just one season from 2014-15.
11 BELOVED
Most exorcism movies exist solely for the sake of being exorcism movies. And we love them for it. There’s nothing wrong with that. But Beloved (1998) aspired to be something more. It was Oprah Winfrey’s passion project, a film that aimed to be an Oscar contender (it was at least nominated for Best Costume Design), and Oprah has said that its colossal failure to reach audiences (making just $22.9 million on a massive $80 million budget) thrust her into a depression.
Directed by Jonathan Demme, who knows something about turning scares into Oscars thanks to The Silence of the Lambs, Beloved is really much better than its box office numbers would have you believe, though it is overly-long, running nearly three hours. It’s a period piece that tells the tale of Sethe, a former slave, played by Oprah. The film is terrifying in different ways than other exorcism films because there’s a lot of living-on-living horror, as well as the supernatural sort. It flashes back to Sethe’s slave days, being whipped and raped, and eventually, Sethe is compelled to kill her daughter rather than have her endure a life of slavery. Years later, released from slavery, Sethe takes in a mentally challenged girl named Beloved (Thandie Newton), who she learns is the reincarnation of her dead daughter. Sethe had been plagued by supernatural phenomena in the past, which drove her sons out of the house, but things only get worse from there, resulting in an attempted exorcism.
10 DELIVER US FROM EVIL
Another film purported to be based on a true story, Deliver Us From Evil(2014) has a solid pedigree thanks to director Scott Derrickson. He also helmed the solid horror flick Sinister, and he previously contributed to exorcism movie lore with The Exorcism of Emily Rose (more on that one later), not to mention his upcoming stint behind the camera on Doctor Strange.
This film differs from a lot of other exorcism fare in that it largely takes the form of a cop drama with decidedly creepy elements, as a cop named Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana), investigates strange events. But things get stranger as he meets a hip, young, shaggy-haired priest/exorcist named Mendoza (Edgar Ramirez) and we finally get our long-awaited exorcism toward the end. Overall, you get some solid jump scares, intense family drama, atmospheric creepiness and the requisite preternatural intensity of possession. Oh, and let’s not forget the creepy owl stuffy.
9 THE POSSESSION
2012’s The Possession takes a little from the tried-and-true column and a little from the haven’t-seen-that-before column. Along that first column, we have the story of a girl from a broken home who becomes possessed getting checked out for medical issues before the exorcism route is taken. Sounds a lot like The Exorcist, doesn't it? The difference here, though, is that it all stems from Jewish mysticism rather than the traditional Christian mysticism.
The young girl finds a dybbuk box, which is inspired by an urban myth perpetuated by the real-life sale of such a box on eBay a few years ago, along with the spooky story the seller added to the post. The box is said to be a wine cabinet haunted by an evil spirit called a dybbuk. In the movie, when the girl opens it, all kinds of horror befalls her and her family, not the least of which being that she seems to be possessed by the spirit. The medical tests show disturbing images of the dybbuk inside her, and ultimately we get a Hasidic Jewish take on the exorcism ritual, which is a nice change of pace for the genre. Plus, there’s a solid cast, featuring Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick as the girl’s parents, not to mention Sam Raimi producing.
8 THE PRIESTS
Next, we head over to South Korea for the 2015 film The Priests. Clearly, based on the title, we’re back to the Catholic sphere, but the Korean culture switch is refreshing. For example, we see something of a camaraderie between the Catholic priest exorcist and a traditional Korean shaman exorcist, and the Korean importance of dates and years also plays a role.
As is often the case, the possessed in this movie is a young girl, but in this film, she’s initially in a coma as a result of an accident. And the movie doesn’t even focus as much as you’d expect from an exorcism movie on her, the possessed. Through the first two thirds of the flick, we get a lot of fascinating research and preparation by the older priest/exorcist and his younger, more skeptical assistant. Nevertheless, there’s plenty of creepiness and jarring possession scenes to keep exorcism fans more than entertained in this solid first feature from writer/director Jang Jae-hyun.
7 THE EXORCIST 3
Like we mentioned in the intro, The Exorcist was followed by The Exorcist II: The Heretic -- which saw the return of Linda Blair as Regan and Max von Sydow as Father Merrin four years after the original -- but was a truly horrible mess of a film by just about any measure. Finally, the franchise returned 16 years later with The Exorcist 3, which featured only one actor from the original cast, but it more than had the original writer of the novel, William Peter Blatty’s, blessing. It was based on a story by Blatty, who also wrote the screenplay and directed the film.
It’s by no means a perfect film and not nearly on par with the original, but it’s still a quality horror movie with some really solid scares. The plot is a little on the complicated side, but essentially, the demon that was exorcised from Regan’s body in the '70s was so angry at Father Karras (Jason Miller reprising the role) that it put the soul of a serial killer in his body, and that soul was used to commit murders by jumping into other people at night. And there’s also a nice cynical cop portrayal from George C. Scott, for what it's worth.
6 KEEPER OF DARKNESS
We go back to the Far East for the 2015 horror Keeper of Darkness, directed by and starring Hong Kong born, award-winning actor Nick Cheung. It spent its first two weeks at the number one spot at Hong Kong's box office and was nominated for six Hong Kong film awards. And Cheung gives us another new take on the exorcism tale, one mostly devoid of religion.
Cheung’s character, Fatt, is just a civilian who happens to be able to talk to spirits, and he exorcises them simply by having a good chat, convincing them to leave people alone. As you can imagine, this works fairly easily when he’s dealing with more benevolent spirits, but he eventually comes across a father-daughter ghost team that’s not so easily convinced, and that’s when things get good. It’s a movie with some slick, spooky effects for good scares, but there’s also a healthy dose of humor to balance things out.
5 THE LAST EXORCISM
With a modest $1.8-million budget, 2010’s The Last Exorcism is one of those little horror movies that could, raking in $67.7 million domestically. And, unlike a film like The Devil Inside, which was an even bigger box office success, this one made good money because it was actually good. The documentary-style film follows an affable, but faithless exorcist named Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) who’s called to a farmhouse to perform an exorcism on the farmer’s daughter, Nell (Ashley Bell).
A bit of a hustler, Marcus is used to performing fake exorcisms just to appease his clientele, but he’s in for a surprise. The film’s intensity ramps up gradually as the spirit controlling Nell gains more and more control over her body. Bell, in her first major film role, is a revelation, displaying leering evil and a wonderfully disturbing ability to contort her body. And then there’s the wild, unexpected ending. If only it could have been left at that, but it was followed by a vastly inferior sequel.
4 THE CONJURING
We’re going to call it a tie between 2013’s The Conjuringand its 2016 sequel, The Conjuring 2, but we’re going to show the sequel as one notch higher on the list, just for ease of our own storytelling purposes. Both star Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren, the real-life husband-and-wife team of paranormal investigators.
In the first film, the Warrens investigate paranormal activity at a house -- after a new family moves in -- once owned by an accused witch who had cursed her land back in the 19th century. The history of the house ever since the curse is littered with death. Eventually, the mother becomes possessed by the witch. Ed chooses to try to perform an exorcism on his own, since a priest is unavailable, which is a pretty risky move, and he’s at first met with some pretty terrifying resistance before finally finding some success.
3 THE CONJURING 2
This is a truly rare case of a horror movie, let alone an exorcism movie, having a sequel that’s just as good as the original. In the sequel, the Warrens head to England for their latest investigation. Lorraine has been plagued by horrifying visions of Ed’s death by decapitation, and when they get to London, she realizes the same demon giving her the visions (in the form of a disturbing white-faced nun) is also plaguing the family they’re investigating, possessing one of the family’s daughters.
Again, the Warrens don’t rely on the Catholic church for their exorcism in this one, as its Lorraine that takes care of business. Like its predecessor, The Conjuring 2 is filled with truly unsettling imagery and great performances by Wilson and Farmiga. The series has spawned a spinoff in Annabelle (revolving around the creepy doll seen in the first film), plus there’s an Annabelle 2 set for release May 19, 2017. A film based on The Conjuring 2’s demon nun is also in the works.
2 THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE
Like many exorcism films, The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) is another that attempts to add spooky legitimacy by claiming to be based on a true story. And there are definitely elements of this film that you can imagine may have actually occurred as you see them on the screen, because it’s very much about showing both sides to the story. Was Emily Rose (Dexterstar Jennifer Carpenter, killing it in her first major film role) really possessed by an evil demon? Or was she mentally ill?
It’s not much of a spoiler to tell you that Emily dies following exorcisms performed by a Catholic priest named Father Moore (Colin Wilkinson), because the film jumps back and forth between Moore’s trial for negligent homicide and the events that took place at the Rose family’s farm that led to her death. And those events are downright horrifying. Emily suffers from terrifying visions, she eats bugs, and she’s pinned to her bed and choked by an invisible hand. She contorts herself in unnatural ways, most of which, like Bell in The Last Exorcism, are actually performed by Carpenter, making them all the more grotesque. And that’s just in the early days of the “possession.” You’ll have to watch to see the rest.
Incidentally, two other films have been made based on the real-life events that led to the death of German teenager Anneliese Michel in 1976. Due to her strange behavior, the Catholic church granted the rare approval to perform an exorcism on the girl. But it wasn’t just one exorcism, it was 67, performed over the course of almost a year. Eventually, she was so malnourished and dehydrated that she died, resulting in her parents and two priests being charged with negligent homicide. Requiem (2006), was a German film that focused less on scares and more on the drama, while Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes (2011) was a direct-to-DVD film that went the opposite route, focusing on horror. Neither had the balance we enjoyed in Emily Rose.
1 THE EXORCIST
Yes, we know, we’re not fooling anyone by placing the granddaddy of all exorcism movies, 1973’s The Exorcist, at number one. But what can we say? It’s simply the best, and it laid the groundwork for all exorcism movies that followed. In many cases, other exorcism movies are merely faded copies of the pure dramatic horror and grotesque visuals of the original. It ranks at the top of many lists of the best horror movies of all time, and it ranked highly on our own list earlier this year.
It, too, is based on a true story, and was infamously plagued by strange happenings to cast and crew on and off the set. But it’s what we see on screen that makes it the best, most terrifying exorcism movie of all time. It’s the psychological nightmare of a mother who doesn’t know what to do about her daughter’s strange behavior, and the terrifying things that happen to her. But most famously, it’s the blaspheming, head-spinning, upside-down-walking, projectile-vomiting performance of Linda Blair as Regan -- along with the special effects that made her possession appear so nightmarishly realistic -- that make this classic so damn good.
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List Of Exorcism Movies
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The director's journey from The Exorcist to a real exorcism
By Richard Whittaker, 9:00AM, Sat. Jan. 5, 2019
William Friedkin sits back on a couch in the Four Seasons and stares at me. 'Possession,' he intoned, 'is a religious-based disease.'
It's funny sometimes how a filmmaker's name can become associated with one movie. Even with a filmography of landmark movies – Sorcerer, The French Connection, Cruising – and a career that has seen him steadily drift away from cinema and increasingly into theatre, Friedkin will always be synonymous with The Exorcist, his chilling and methodical retelling of William Peter Blatty's novel of demonic infestation in Georgetown.
Over four decades later, Friedkin re-enforced that link with another movie about possession, 2017's The Devil and Father Amorth. Yet rather than a work of horror fiction, this was a documentary, a rare public record of one of the Roman Catholic church's most secretive rites, as conducted by the Vatican's leading exorcist.
But to look at these films as a circular theme in his life – or bookends to a career – is to miss the real point. They are mile markers on a map, guided by Friedkin's polymath instincts and creative impulses. An hour in his company, and the topic switches wildly, from 14th-century mystical tract The Cloud of Unknowing to the rise of Hitler, to the reconstruction of Shakespeare's plays for the first folios by John Heminges and Henry Condell, and the fleeting nature of cinema. He said, 'I don't go through life as a skeptic. I go through life as someone who's profoundly curious about a great many things, and I try to find out about a great many things.'The Story Everyone Believes
December 26, 1973, The Exorcist is released on 26 screens in the U.S. In all the time since those first screenings it's remained the gold standard for satanic cinema: Often emulated, sometimes imitated, rarely equaled. But it's pure fiction. When it comes to actual exorcisms, Friedkin said, 'The film The Exorcist is what people think is involved, and neither Bill Blatty nor myself had ever seen one.'
Not that he was really that bothered about accurately catching the ritual. 'The Exorcist movie is about the mystery of faith,' he said. 'It cannot be explained. It's like the mystery of love. You meet someone, you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you. Someone else meets the same person, no effect at all.'
His lack of interest in precision was fortunate, because the material available on the subject was limited to say the least. Blatty was inspired to write the original book by a 1949 exorcism in St. Louis, Mo., but when it came to the details he was working in a vacuum, bar exchanging letters with the exorcist, the Rev. William Bowden. 'When Blatty wrote his novel,' Friedkin continued, 'there was almost no literature on the subject at all. There was no fiction that you could rely on, and no non-fiction. [Blatty] spent months working in the Library of Congress, looking for stuff.'
The obvious resource, the Roman Catholic Church, was no help at all, either in researching the book or making the film. 'They don't talk about it – and rightly so. Because a, it's a very personal matter, and b, it's not the greatest example of human behavior. And often as not, they don't cure it. So they don't want people to know that there're people out there who have been exorcised, and are not, as they call it, liberated.'
When it comes to the actual act of exorcism, he said, 'There's more bullshit written about it than almost anything I can think of, by people with an axe to grind.'
A Quick Trip to Rome
When making The Exorcist, Friedkin filled that information void with Blatty's narrative and his own filmmaking instincts. In 2016, Friedkin replaced fantasy with reality when he was able to sit it on an actual exorcism conducted by Father Gabriele Amorth – co-founder of the International Association of Exorcists and the Vatican's exorcist in chief – an exorcism he caught on camera and released as a documentary, The Devil and Father Amorth.
The documentary happened, he said, 'quite by accident – or by providence.' Aside from his career in film, he has established a reputation directing opera, most especially productions of Puccini for the Washington National Opera and the L.A. Opera. In 2016, he was invited to the Italian composer's birthplace, Lucca, to be honored for his work. 'I had to be there for eight days, and I figured that's a pretty long time to do master classes and interviews and lectures. Somebody casually mentioned that it was a 35-minute drive from Lucca to Pisa, and I wanted to see the tower, which I had never seen and is spectacular – it's an amazing sight and no picture does it justice – and that there was a one hour flight from Pisa to Rome.'
He had friends in Rome so he wrote to several of them, including one who is a theologian. 'I asked him, I said, 'Look, I'm here for eight days. Do you think it would be possible to meet Father Amorth?' And he said, 'Well, I'll check.' And word came back in a day that he would be happy to meet me.' Friedkin then had what he called 'a wonderful meeting with this very spiritual man, and then back to Lucca, and then I went home.'
That could have been that, if it hadn't been for Graydon Carter, the then-editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. Friedkin and his wife, legendary studio executive Sherry Lansing, were at the magazine's Oscars party, and the director and the editor were chatting on the terrace, 'He asked me, 'Where have you been, where have your travels taken you?' So I tell him, and he says, 'Geez, you've got to write that for Vanity Fair.'
One problem: Friedkin hadn't take any notes or even recorded the conversation with Amorth. Carter told him, 'Go back, and I'll give you as much space as you need.' So Friedkin flew back to Rome, met with Amorth again, and produced a 6,500-word article titled 'The Devil and Father Amorth: Witnessing 'the Vatican Exorcist' at Work' that eventually ran in December 2016.
Again, that would seem to be that. At the end of the interview, Friedkin asked Amorth if he could be allowed to sit in on an actual exorcism. Of course, he presumed the answer would be a definitive no. 'It's not a show,' Friedkin said. 'It's not ... entertainment, and they don't allow visitors. Family, yes, but they even frown on friends. He said, 'Let me think it over,' and word came back that he would allow me to witness it.'
It turned out that Amorth was not only aware of Friedkin's horror classic but actually had an appreciation for it. 'He said that while the special effects were over the top, he felt that the film helped people understand his work.' Then Friedkin pushed his luck a little more, and wrote to Father Stefano Stimamiglio, Amorth's superior at the Pauline Order, asking whether he could film it: Again, to his surprise, the answer was yes, although under very strict conditions – no crew, no lights. So on at 3pm on May 1, 2016, William Friedkin took a DSLR camera and filmed the exorcism of a woman called Cristina in Venafro, a small village in the mountainous heart of Italy.
The Mind of the Devil
Amorth passed away a few months after the exorcism: not from any satanic intervention, but from heart-related issues at the age of 91. In the documentary, he comes across as serious but puckish. Friedkin called him 'the most spiritual person I've ever met,' but at the same time 'he was a very funny guy. He thumbed his nose at the devil.'
When it came to the actual exorcism, he added, 'It's like anything else. There's basketball players, and there's Michael Jordan and LeBron James. (Amorth) was in a class by himself.'
That's a small class. Earlier this year, at a conference for exorcists held in Sicily, it was estimated that 500,000 requests for exorcism are made every year in Italy alone; however, most requests are rejected. Friedkin estimates that only one in a thousand Roman Catholic priests 'have ever seen an exorcism, never mind performed one.'
This meant Friedkin was in an unrivaled position to see what few had witnessed before as Amorth performed the ritual on Cristina. 'I knew that she would go through a personality and behavioral change. She did – to an extraordinary extent. There's four and sometimes five guys holding her down, and they're sweating. I was two feet away from her, and she had really uncommon strength for a woman her age and size, and a complete alteration of personality, including her voice.'
In the documentary, the transformation is like a light switch going on – a far remove from The Exorcist, where Regan's possession is like a worsening infection. 'In reality,' Friedkin said these are attacks that come on people, like an epileptic fit.' Moreover, exorcism is not a simple cure: It's a recurrent treatment, with the ritual he filmed being Cristina's ninth.
Friedkin has a knack for such unusual vantage points. Years prior, he had stood by Dr. Neil Martin, the chief of neurosurgery at the UCLA Medical Center, as he undertook a seven-hour-long brain surgery. After Lucca, he decided he needed to do 'something meaningful' with this new footage. So, of course, he went to some of the psychiatrists and leading brain surgeons that he knew, including McNeil and brain mapping expert John C. Mazziotta, to see what they had to say.
Hold up. Priests. Theologians. Brain surgeons. Vanity Fair editors. If this was anyone else, this would seem like pure fantasy. But this is William Friedkin, with his unquenchable thirst for knowledge and a willingness to ask until someone says 'no.' That's how he got to sit in on that brain surgery: He'd been asked to be the guest of honor at the 2013 UCLA Neurosurgery Visionary Ball, and he agreed, on the condition that he got to watch the surgery and talk about it at the ball: 'Not talk about myself or the movies, or anything like that. I wanted to tell people what it was like to see a brain surgery at close hand.' Like that first meeting with Amorth, he didn't film it. He just wanted to know.
So if The Exorcist is about the mystery of faith, the The Devil and Father Amorth is more like Friedkin's attempt to provide a definitive answer on one issue. That's why he took the footage to doctors like Martin: 'Frankly, to see if they would debunk it. To try and get them to debunk it, and explain it in either layman's language, or according to their medical specialties. And they did not debunk it.'
The experts he chose didn't simply take an objective view of the evidence but have been willing to probe more nebulous questions of morality: For example, the brain mapping program that Mazziotta heads up has even found an area of the brain called the 'kill switch' – the area associated with murder, and what Friedkin referred to as the place where evil lives. Yet even they could not find a clear medical cause.
So what, then, are these possessed people going through? Both The Exorcist and The Devil and Father Amorth explore a Catholic response to the phenomenon of possession – but Friedkin is not Catholic, and does not restrict possession to a Catholic experience. Throughout the documentary he refers to possession as a disease – in part, he explained, because he didn't know what else to call it.
Instead of just demons flinching from holy water, it's a seemingly universal phenomenon that is filtered through cultural lenses (for a cinematic take on that very issue, hunt down Belief: The Possession of Janet Moses, which recounts a death by exorcism in a Maori community). Friedkin said, 'Someone who is Jewish or an atheist or a Muslim is not going to go to a priest if he has one of these attacks.'
What is seen in Catholicism as demonic possession is seen in Judaism as the actions of a dybbuk, the spirit of a dead person that clings to the living. Before seeing a Catholic exorcism, Friedkin had seen kindred rituals among voodoo practitioners, and the pre-Christian ecstasies of the Yazedi and and the Dervishes while he was shooting The Exorcist in Northern Iraq, 'and then there are belief systems like the Anglican church. I couldn't tell you what they account for. The only things I know about them are what I've seen on Ali G.'
So strip away the religious aspects. What's happening? According to the medical experts Friedkin consulted for his documentary, it's not physical. 'They all said that while everything originates in the brain, it's not a problem of the brain. It's not epilepsy. It's not a lesion in the temporal lobe. It's something else that they felt they couldn't treat.'
So is it mental? The conversation turns once again to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (some of those health care professionals he knows helped write the last two volumes) – how diagnoses and syndromes change over time, in part because how we look at symptoms and how they interlock changes. Additionally, there's the difference between cultures (for example, as explored in the 2007 film Does Your Soul Have a Cold, the Japanese concept of depression is profoundly different to that in the West – as American pharmaceutical companies found when they started trying to sell antidepressants in Japan). In the DSM-5, what religious people call possession is classified as dissociative identity disorder – demonic possession. 'If someone comes to a psychiatrist and says, 'I think I'm possessed,' they don't say, 'No, you're not possessed, we're going to give you a little therapy and some medication, and we'll take care of it.' They treat the person as though they're possessed, and with an exorcist present.'
Even Amorth himself refused to see someone claiming to be possessed until they had seen psychiatrists and surgeons. 'They would have to say there was nothing they could do, and often there was a lot they could do. Often it was another form of mental illness, that could be treated or even operate on. But the cases that he took, there was nothing that medical science or psychiatry could do.'
According to Friedkin, '[Amorth] did not believe in a corporate devil. He believed that the devil was a metaphor for evil. It was a way of defining evil. It's not a creature in a red suit with horns and a pitch fork, or any other definition that you may have seen of a devil. It is the idea of evil that can manifest itself in almost anyone at any time.'
There's a symmetry at play here. Much of the second act of The Exorcist abandons any sheen of religion; instead, it's about doctors trying to explain the experience through science. And even after all Friedkin has seen, he still has no definitive answers. 'I've come to the realization that no one knows anything about the eternal truths. People can go to a church or a synagogue of wherever, and hear all these homilies and statements of profound belief, but whether or not you believe it is inherent in your own belief system.'
The Devil and Father Amorth is available now on YouTube Movies, GooglePlay, and Netflix.