Leave well enough alone

We were watching Exorcist: The Beginning the other night.  There was nothing else to watch on Netflix.  I got curious when a younger Father Merrin stated there were no recorded churches in Africa in the fifth century.  I knew the Coptics had reached Africa long ago.  I wasn't sure when.  Recent archeological discoveries in Ethiopia found the remains of a church that dated back to the 4th century, replete with dark amulets and signet rings.  This was about the time Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire, and so there was a greater free flow of religious fervor.  The legend had long been that a Greek missionary brought Christianity to the Aksumite kingdom but religious scholars wanted something more concrete than an apocryphal story.

Ethiopians figure heavily into the Bible so it was hard to understand why the screenwriters set their demonic possessed church in the Turkana region of Kenya, albeit with a border to Ethiopia. Christianity came here much later with the colonialists.  Even horror stories need to be grounded in a bit of ecclesiastical truth.  That's what made The Exorcist so frightening.

Paul Schrader was initially signed on to do the 2004 prequel but his version wasn't deemed scary enough, so Warner Brothers brought in Renny Harlin of Nightmare on Elm Street fame to add a little more fright.  The result was as you would expect - a mash up of dark brooding scenes, dated CGI and early Christianity made into some kind of devil worship.  Since we know how the story ended there was little suspense.  

The Africa setting is in sharp contrast to the original movie.  The diabolical amulet, or Pazuzu, was discovered at an archeological dig in Iraq.  It's a real thing that William Peter Blatty referred to in the novel.  Pazuzu has an ancient history and representations have been found all over the world, so I suppose one could have ended up in Africa, turning this mythical early Orthodox church into a shrine for the devil.  

It's too bad the screenwriters made no effort to dig into the origins of the ancient demon, which first appeared in Mesopotamia somewhere between 500 and 800 BC.  Instead, Merrin wallows around the first half of the movie in a semi-drunken state trying to find the chief archeologist who uncovered the amulet, only to watch Monsier Bession slash a Nazi cross into his chest before dying in his cell.  You would think the head priest of the sanatorium would have kept sharp objects away from a guy like this. The movie had an Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark vibe, albeit set shortly after the war.

One of the big problems with moviemaking is that compelling stories just aren't enough for these studio producers.  They want to ratchet things up ten fold, which was why Schrader was dropped.  Apparently, he clung too much to the original idea of the story.  His version was eventually released as Dominion with Skarsgard as Father Merrin. Others were subsequently recast.  Roger Ebert preferred this one to the replacement. 

Alas, this was a movie that didn't need to be made at all as the original fulfilled all one's expectations in such a horror movie that it needed no prequel or sequel.  The Exorcist is one of the greatest films ever made.  Sadly, the attempts to more fully explain the 1973 classic only serve to muddy the story up, leaving me with a queasy feeling similar to eating too much pasta.