Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) or, The Exorcist: Back to Africa!

3/20/2017

Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) or, The Exorcist: Back to Africa!

♥♥♥

+ Most Deserved Flop of the Year

A somewhat bland poster for Renny Harlin's Exorcist: The Beginning

Father Merrin is a priest who has fallen from his faith, as he gets hired to work as an archaeologist at a buried church in Africa, which shouldn't exist. SPOILER - It turns out the be a church of Lucifer!

Exorcist: The Beginning, written by Alexi Hawley (The Following (2014-15)), with Caleb Carr (Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005)) and William Wisher Jr. (Judge Dredd (1995)) contributing story elements, and directed by Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger (1993)), is a tolerably decent prequel to William Friedkin's original masterpiece The Exorcist (1973).
Stellan Skarsgård (Beowuld & Grendel (2005)) is ideally cast as a younger version of Merrin, so memorably played by Max Von Sydow in the original. Exorcist: The Beginning is a totally different type of film, and its best moments are primarily in the devious, subterranean church. It is marred by an ugly CGI-rendered hyena attack and general overuse of closeups.
Exorcist: The Beginning is an unobtrusive and forgettable horror.

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Here's the first minute of the film from a VHS release

Cost: 50 mil. $
Box office: 78 mil. $
= Big flop
[Exorcist: The Beginning premiered 18 August (Hollywood) and runs 114 minutes. The film came to be as a reaction to Paul Shrader's Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005), the original prequel film, which Shrader had made too talky, slow and un-gory for the studios' (Morgan Creek Productions and distributor Warner Bros.) liking, and so he was fired, and a new prequel was produced: Skarsgård stars in both films, but Harlin is reportedly responsible for most of what is seen in Exorcist: The Beginning. Shooting took place from November 2003 - February 2004 in Casablanca, Morocco and Italy, including in Rome's Cinecittà Studios. The film isn't consistent with the facts stated in Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) about the African setting and possessed boy there. It opened #1 with 18 mil. $ in North America, where it fell to #5 in its second week before leaving the top 5 and grossed 41.8 mil. $ (53.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Italy with 7.5 mil. $ (9.6 %) and Spain with 5.2 mil. $ (6.7 %). Shrader was subsequently allowed to release his 30 mil. $ movie, which grossed an even worse, catastrophic 251k $ domestically. Sometimes the Exorcist: The Beginning cost is erroneously listed as 80 mil. $, the combined budget of the two films. Friedkin has called Exorcist: The Beginning his "most humiliating professional experience." Exorcist: The Beginning is rotten at 11 % with a 3.5 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

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3/20/2017

Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) or, The Exorcist: Back to Africa!

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