~


It’s early. I’m alone in the office. I’m the only person on the whole floor. I get goose bumps just typing the title of the movie and I don’t know what the hell I’m thinking writing this.

I get scared easily with horror movies but I’m a sucker for those things. I just cover my eyes and peak through my fingers as though they were a fence every time I feel there’s going to be a “jumpy” scene. I just love the roller-coaster ride watching scary movies although I don’t fancy those Asian thrillers whose murderous undead all look like Sadako. Granted, it might not be Sadako who inspired the hurricane-stricken long hair with one bulging eye-ball showing fashion-style. Maybe all Asian ghosts are cousins. Sadako is good though because she can walk out of TV sets. I wish porn stars could do that. “Buy this Jenna Jameson DVD and after seven days, you’ll die from dehydration and pure bliss!” Maybe that’s why Sadako’s victims all look like that when they die – contorted faces and wide open jaws, hmmm, euphoria?

The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a good movie. It’s actually inspiring. When was the last time you saw a scary movie that had values in it? When the movie ends, you realize that it doesn’t exactly fall into the “horror” genre. As my princess Leah also observed, the movie focused on the trial (the judicial kind) of Catholic priest Fr. Richard Moore who was accused of neglecting the need for medical treatment and instead performed a failed exorcism that eventually lead to Emily Rose’s death.

The story-telling was tight and there was nothing to detract you from it. The plot basically asks the question: Was Emily Rose possessed by demons? Or was she a very sick girl who walked away from medical treatment that could’ve saved her life?* The movie almost begs to open the ageless science vs. religion debate but we won’t go there. For more info about science and religion and as well as to get entertained silly, get a copy of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons.



A quick look at IMDB shows that director Scott Derrickson has done two scary movies. So far this is his most decent film. There were no unnecessary scenes. The producers could’ve shown more disturbing possession symptoms but I realized that that wasn’t the film’s objective. It is disturbing and will freak out someone who’s as skittish as me but it doesn’t go over the top like The Exorcist franchise. Nope, no rotating heads and bottom-less green puke in this one. Maybe it’s the trailer that may mislead viewers into thinking that this is a scare-you-shitless movie because this movie has the scariest trailer I’ve ever seen.

That Jennifer Carpenter girl (Emily Rose) is amazingly, um, limber. The audience laughed when she went catatonic and her father stood her up from the floor as though she were a mic-stand. That alone ought to land her an Oscar nomination.

I give the movie 5 tickets out of 5 and our left over popcorn that we never got to finish because we were scared out of our wits.

--
*www.sonypictures.com/movies/theexorcismofemilyrose/