Exorcist - The Beginning
(2004)
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Father Lankester Merrin thinks that he has glimpsed the face of Evil. In the years following World War II, Merrin (Stellan Skarsgård) has traveled far from his native Holland in a desperate attempt to escape the memories of the horrors he witnessed there. His faith in tatters, Merrin drifts through Africa, and there is employed as an archaeologist to find an ancient relic within a recently unearthed Byzantine church in Kenya. But beneath the church, something much older sleeps, waiting to be awoken. |
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This sloppy prequel plunders liberally from William Friedkin's original spine tingler, yet remains the crudest of shockers. Paul Schrader was removed as director from the project after his cut was deemed too cerebral, but could it have been worse than replacement Renny Harlin's bad B-movie? The film outlines how future Georgetown exorcist Father Lankester Merrin (Stellan Skarsgård) loses his faith during the Nazi occupation of Holland and rediscovers it in a remote area of Kenya in 1949. There he examines a buried 5th-century church — mistakenly built on the spot where Lucifer fell — where evil and CGI hyenas lurk. It turns hilariously funny when the possessed one is revealed and the demonic scares and swearing begin. Skarsgård retains some of Max von Sydow's solemness as the young Merrin, but the rest of the cast fails to rise above the clichéd gruesomeness.