Backstory on how Father Merrin -- the old priest under the streetlamp -- lost his faith in a Nazi concentration camp and regained it in a confrontation with a devil's agent at an archaeological dig in Kenya. An hour-and-three-quarter afterthought, it has all the standard disadvantages of prequels: it fails to advance the story; it adds nothing that needed to be said; it dampens the suspense; it takes the edge off. Surely it would have done better to sever all ties to the Exorcist original: no Scandinavian cleric (opening the door to a more appealing leading man than the sotto voce Stellan Skarsgard); no greenface makeup and gravel-voiced ventriloquism; none of the disadvantages of prequels. The project would appear to have had enough going for it to have stood on its own. The idea -- the image -- of a church where there should not be a church, a Fifth-century church in the wilds of East Africa, a buried church, a desecrated church, built on the spot where legend has it that Lucifer fell to earth, is well worth exploring, and it affords abundant justification before ever setting out. From that starting point, however, we are obliged, like Olympic gymnastics judges, to take deductions: for ugly special effects (the herky-jerky animated hyenas, the copycat sandstorm computer program handed down from The Mummy through Hidalgo, the maggoty stillborn infant, etc.), for monochromatic flashbacks (isn't it bad enough to borrow a plot device from Sophie's Choice without also borrowing the manner of presentation?), for monotonous monstrous closeups. Izabella Scorupco, James D'Arcy, Ben Cross; directed by Renny Harlin. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
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