Check out that kovie poster thàt stìll has the original release date of the 13th on it. It turns out that is the date when Taylor Swift's "The Eras Tour" movie is going to be released, and the studio didn't want to compete with Taylor Swift for viewers, so they moved the release date up. It works for me because now I get to see this movie today. I'm not gonna lie, we were originally hoping to see Saw X, but we got to the theater late, and this was our only option. Luckily I wanted to see this one almost as much as I wanted to see Saw X, so I wasn't too broken up about it. I thought I didn't know anything about this movie going in, but then the third act of the movie started and I realized that someone had spoiled the ending for me, only I didn't understand that what they said was a spoiler until I actually saw the movie. Shame on you, spoilers. Don't ruin the movie for people who haven't seen it. With so much hype surrounding this movie, it's inevitable that it would probably be a let down (because nothing can live up to the fame of the original) but this movie is going to try, so I'll give it a chance.
The premise of this movie is simple: two thirteen year old girls, Angela and Kathryn, are best friends who decide to take off into the woods after school one day and mess around with trying to conjure spirits. Bad idea, kids. Things go too far, and the girls are found three days later 30 miles from where they started out, disoriented and with no memory of what happened or how they got there. At first the parents are overjoyed that their kids are back with them, but soon it becomes clear that something has changed. The girls are different. As days pass and the girls' behavior becomes increasingly strange, the parents search for answers, at first turning to psychology, then as they become more desperate, they start to turn toward spiritual answers for how to help their daughters. Will the parents be able to save their girls, or will the Devil take them both?
There’s a great scene that shows the contrast between scientific answers and the spiritual realm, when the camera zooms in on a syringe with a bottle of medicine next to it, then the camera pulls back and we see the parents preparing the girls for an exorcism. I love the juxtaposition of the scientific with the spiritual in that shot. This movie is really about what happens when a family is beset by evil. What are they willing to do? How far are they willing to go to save their daughters? At first, Angela's dad doesn't believe in the supernatural side of things. He's all about the science, while Kathryn's family are established in a church, but they find their religion useless in the face of the horror that has taken away their daughter and replaced her with something evil. The families clash at first, but end up working together to try and defeat the demons that possess their daughters. I don't know what I would do if something like this happened to my child, but I hope I would keep an open mind and be open to spiritual answers for my questions.
I empathize with Angela's dad as his ordered world starts to fall apart around him. He's reluctant to look at spirituality for answers, until he finds a book written by a mother who went through the ordeal herself and managed to save her daughter. Ellen Burstyn, the mother from the first Exorcist movie, makes an appearance here as the mother whose daughter survived demonic possession. Leslie Odom Jr. plays Angela's dad in this movie, and he does a good job making me sympathize with his plight. Ann Dowd does a good job playing a neighbor who wants to help. Jennifer Nettles plays Kathryn's mom, and I kinda wanted to punch her at first, but I ended up liking her character by the end of the movie. Lidya Jewett plays Angela and Olivia O'Neill plays Kathryn, and they both are perfect in their roles. I was totally invested in what they were going through and i wanted them to defeat the demons inside them.
So why do so many people seem to dislike this movie? It only has a 23% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the critics have almost universally panned the movie, saying that it has a "lack of new ideas" and the same old scare tactics we've seen a thousand times before. There's some truth to that. It's no secret that I don't like the original movie The Exorcist. I find it tedious and boring and I have a lot of problems with the narrative structure, but regardless of my feelings about the movie, I acknowledge that it's a classic, and most of the demonic possession movies have drawn inspiration from and wouldn't exist without it. When you compare this one with the original, I definitely like this one better, but when most people compare it with the original it's a retread of the same ideas and it comes up wanting. I have to say that while I did enjoy this movie, I have to admit that it's nothing I haven't seen before already.
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