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Movies: The Exorcism of Emily Rose

December 2, 2005

SYNOPSIS

In 1999, the Vatican revised the official rite of exorcism text for the first time in over 400 years.

The number of Catholic exorcists in Italy increased from 30 to 300 over the last decade.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago recently appointed the first full-time official exorcist in its 160-year history.

In New York , four Catholic priests have officially investigated over 40 cases of possession since 1995.

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In an extremely rare decision, the Catholic Church officially recognized the demonic possession of a nineteen-year-old college freshman. Told in terrifying flashbacks, THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE chronicles the haunting trial of the priest accused of negligence resulting in the death of the young girl believed to be possessed. Inspired by true events, the film stars LAURA LINNEY as Erin Bruner, the lawyer defending Father Richard Moore (TOM WILKINSON), the priest who performed the controversial exorcism.

Emily Rose (JENNIFER CARPENTER) leaves her sheltered rural home to attend college with no possible inkling of what awaits her. Alone in the dorm one night, she has her first terrifying ‘hallucination’ and blackout. As her attacks become ever more frequent and severe, Emily, a devout Catholic, chooses to undergo an exorcism conducted by her parish priest, Father Richard Moore. When the young girl dies during the terrifying exorcism the priest is charged with negligent homicide. When the young girl dies during the terrifying exorcism, the priest is charged with negligent homicide.

Erin Bruner, a high-profile defense lawyer reluctantly agrees to represent Father Moore in exchange for the guarantee of a partnership at her law firm. As the trial progresses, Erin ’s cynicism and atheism are challenged by Father Moore’s unwavering faith and by the eerie, inexplicable events that surround the case.

Review by
ELISABETH LEITCH

If I were like most people reviewing The Exorcism of Emily Rose, I would compare it to other horror films. The problem is, for the most part, I have not seen them. I have avoided them at all costs. And, had I not been given the opportunity to attend the press junket for The Exorcism of Emily Rose, I probably would have avoided this one as well.

It isn’t that I have anything against horror movies. In fact, I have a great respect for the way horror films are able to convey some of the deepest messages about good and evil within all cinema. My problem is, horror movies scare me, and I don’t like to be scared. Imagine my surprise when I finally watched The Exorcism of Emily Rose and was able to return to an empty hotel room in strange city and easily sleep through the night.

It wasn’t that the movie didn’t scare me. Just ask anyone sitting near me during the movie. So the questions was—Why wasn’t I still scared after the movie ended? And the answer I found that made the most sense to me—Even at the beginning of the movie, the true terror was actually over with already, and as I saw it, its opponent had clearly won.

If you didn’t figure it out from previews, Emily Rose is dead when the movie begins. The movie itself is framed by the trial of a priest accused of her negligent homicide. Most of the scenes in the preview that scared me so much—flashbacks and remembrances of witness testifying about Emily’s “condition.”

Framed by a trial, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is immediately set apart from almost every other horror film that has been made. In fact, it is probably the only courtroom horror film ever made. From this minor setting difference, however, comes a unique twist on the “exorcism movie”—instead of showing us demons and spiritual attacks as an unquestioned reality, the movie and its characters take that assumed reality and question whether the demons Emily faced were actually spiritual at all.

For most people, this debate is what truly sets The Exorcism of Emily Rose apart. With one side arguing for a logical/scientific explanation of Emily’s “problems” and the other arguing for a spiritual explanation, we, as viewers, are not buckled in for a ride. Instead, we are pulled into an intellectual and moral dilemma that leads us not only to ponder the questions of Emily’s death, but the bigger questions it asks about life itself. Are there spirits? Is there a Devil? And is there a God?

Unlike many horror films, the horror we see Emily endure is excruciatingly realistic. Jennifer Carpenter (Emily) actually performs almost every physical stunt and voice completely on her own, and because of this, both options for her suffering remain believable. Portraying Emily’s suffering from many points of view, however, the filmmakers also make great use of colors and artistry to give a more demonic feel to some scenes and a more scientific and logical feel to others.

With its structure, its script, and its artistry, this film did an amazing job of making me think about possibilities. In the end, however, the conclusion I came to is that whether Emily’s problem was purely medical or purely spiritual, I believe she was most definitely dealing with demons.

As Father Moore says to his attorney Erin Bruner, “Demons exist whether you believe it or not.” Beyond just that, this movie left me thinking that demons exist whether they look like spiritual forces or not. In most of our lives we call them “personal demons” or struggles. As Laura Linney (Brunner) says, “regardless of who you are and what your religious affiliation is…every person has personal demons, everybody, everybody, everybody…”

Are these demons always evils spirits attacking us? I don’t know. But what I do know is that they take control of us and of our lives. They can torture us and certainly steer us off the path that we know we should be on. Maybe they are medical, maybe psychological, maybe spiritual, and maybe they are a mixture. At the end of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, however, the movie left me not thinking about the torture these demons inflicted upon Emily, but rather the end that they actually met.

The movie is filled with scenes of Emily’s heart wrenching suffering. The whole time we watch, however, Emily is already dead. Maybe medicines didn’t work, maybe the exorcism didn’t either. But regardless of why they did not, in the end, she is released from whatever tormented her, and I believe in a better place.

Bruner also deals with her own demons throughout the movie. She is lonely. She is stressed. She drinks too much. And what she does for a living is starting to weigh her down with guilt. Then this case comes into her life. She is not sure what she actually believes about it, but in the end, a locket she “coincidentally” finds gives her security and she is able to let go of the life that weighed her down.

Even Emily’s boyfriend Jason would not trade in knowing Emily to avoid witnessing the torture she went through. “She [Emily] woke me up to things I couldn’t feel before,” says Jason. “I never knew how dead I was before I met her.”

At the end of the trial as a verdict is given and a sentence handed down, the judge utters one of the lines that is still going through my head, “You are guilty Father Moore and you are free to go.”

In this life, there are so many things that can control us. They can hit us on many levels—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Whatever they are, they throw us off course, make life more difficult to lead, and in one way or another, keep us from leading the life we should.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose is about these things that control us. At the same time, the movie that I watched was just as much about deliverance from these very horrors. It may be through medicine, through other people, through events, through so-called coincidences, through almost anything. Whatever its form, however, the deliverance I saw in The Exorcism of Emily Rose was hard to see as anything but a part of something bigger.

As Bruner say to the court in her closing statement: “Either there is a God or there is not”…and as I think back to the events of this movie, whatever their cause or whatever their nature, I cannot believe anything but that there is God, and that that God wants nothing more than to deliver us from whatever we face, whatever that deliverance may or may not look like.

1. DEFINITION

One who expels demons by the use of magical formulas. In the strict etymological sense there is no exorcism in the Bible. The term “exorcists” is used once (Acts 19:13) in a way to discredit the professional exorcists familiarly known both among Jews and Gentiles.

2. METHOD OF EXPELLING DEMONS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

The method of Jesus in dealing with demoniacs was not that of the exorcists. While it is said (Mt 8:16) that He “cast out the spirits with a word,” it is abundantly clear that the word in question was not ritualistic but authoritative.

In Lk 4:35 we have a typical sentence uttered by our Lord in the performance of His cures: “Hold thy peace, and come out of him.” In Mk 9:29 we have Christ’s own emphasis upon the ethical element in dealing with these mysterious maladies: “This kind can come out by nothing, save by prayer.” In Mt 12:28 Jesus gives His own explanation of the method and power used in His cures: “But if I by the Spirit of God cast out demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you.”

In Lk 9:1 the terms “authority” and “power” are used in such a way as to show the belief of the evangelists that to cure demon-possession an actual power from God, together with the right to use it, was necessary. This group of passages gives the New Testament philosophy of this dread mystery and its cure. The demons are personal evil powers afflicting human life in their opposition to God. It is beyond man unaided to obtain deliverance from them. It is the function of Christ as the redeemer of mankind to deliver men from this as well as other ills due to sin. Miraculous cures of the same kind as those performed by Christ Himself were accomplished by His disciples in His name (Mk 16:17). The power attributed to “His name” supplies us with the opportunity for a most enlightening comparison and contrast.

3. EXORCISM IN ETHNIC AND JEWISH WRITINGS

Exorcism among ancient and primitive peoples rests largely upon faith in the power of magical formulas, ordinarily compounded of the names of deities and pronounced in connection with exorcistic rites, upon the bodies of the afflicted. The words themselves are supposed to have power over the demons, and the mere recital of the correct list of names is supposed to be efficacious.

Attention should be called again to the incantation texts of the Babylonians and Assyrians (see, for translations and full exposition of texts, Rogers, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, 146ff). In this direction the absurdities and cruelties of superstition have carried men to extreme lengths. In the case of Josephus we are amazed to see how even in the case of an educated man the most abject superstition controls his views of such subjects. In Ant, VIII, v, in speaking of the wisdom of Solomon, he says that “God enabled him to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and sanitative to him.” He also describes, in the same connection, a cure which he alleges to have seen, “in the presence of Vespasian and his sons,” performed in accordance with methods of incantation ascribed to Solomon. A ring to which was attached a kind of root mentioned by Solomon was placed at the nostrils of the demoniac and the demon was drawn out through the nostrils. The proof that exorcism had actually taken place was given in the overturning of a basin placed nearby.

The absurdities of this narrative are more than equaled by the story of exorcism told in the Book of Tobit (see Lunge, Apocrypha, 151-53) where the liver and heart of a fish, miraculously caught, are burned upon the ashes of incense, and the resulting smoke drives away a demon. This whole story is well worthy of careful reading for the light it throws upon the unrestrained working of the imagination upon such matters.

In the rabbinical writers the very limit of diseased morbidness is reached in the long and repulsive details, which they give of methods used in exorcism (see Whitehouse, HDB, article “Demon,” I, 592b; compare 593b; Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, II, 775-76).

4. CONTRASTS OF NEW TESTAMENT AND POPULAR METHODS WITH DEMONS

In most striking contrast with this stand the Biblical narratives. The very point of connection which we have noted is also the point of contrast. The mighty and efficacious word with which Jesus rebuked and controlled demons was no exorcistic formula spoken by rote, but His own living word of holy power. “In the name of Jesus” did not mean that the sacred name formally uttered possessed magical power to effectuate a cure. The ancient Semitic formula, “in the name of,” given a deep ethical meaning in the Old Testament, had a still deeper meaning in the New Testament. The proper and helpful use of it meant a reliance upon the presence and living power of Christ from whom alone power to do any mighty work comes (Jn 15:5).

This fundamental difference between the ideas and methods of Jesus and His disciples and current conceptions and usages becomes the more striking when we remember that the lower range of ideas and practices actually prevailed among the people with whom the Lord and His followers were associated. The famous passage (Mt 12:24 and parallel) in which the Pharisees attribute to demoniacal influence the cures wrought by Jesus upon the demonized, usually studied with reference to our Lord’s word about the unforgivable sin, is also remarkable for the idea concerning demons which it expresses. The idea which evidently underlies the accusation against Jesus was that the natural way to obtain control over demons is by obtaining, through magic, power over the ruler of demons. In reply to this Jesus maintains that since the demons are evil they can be controlled only by opposition to them in the power of God.

It is most suggestive that we have in Acts 19:13ff a clear exposition, in connection with exorcism, of just the point here insisted upon. According to this narrative a group of wandering professional Jewish exorcists, witnessing the cures accomplished by Paul, attempted to do the same by the ritualistic use of the name of Jesus. They failed ignominiously because, according to the narrative, they lacked faith in the living Christ by whose power such miracles of healing were wrought, although they were letter-perfect in the use of the formula. This narrative shows clearly what the New Testament understanding of the expression “in my name” implied in the way of faith and obedience.

Here as elsewhere, the chastened mental restraint under which the New Testament was composed, the high spiritual and ethical results of the intimacy of the disciples with Jesus, are clearly manifest.
Our Lord and His disciples dealt with the demoniacs as they dealt with all other sufferers from the malign, enslaving and wasting power of sin, with the tenderness of an illimitable sympathy, and the firmness and effectiveness of those to whom were granted in abundant measure the presence and power of God.

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