<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s one for you. <\/span><\/p>\n A few nights ago, I watched The Exorcism of Emily Rose<\/em>.\u00a0 In the movie, all the bad shit happens at 3am.\u00a0 And when I say bad shit, I mean everything from draining watch batteries to brutally raping young bible thumpers.\u00a0 I wrote four pages, in which I viciously mocked Satan for being a big fucking pussy, and then I passed out on a pile of filthy clothes and neglected to save the document. <\/span><\/p>\n I passed out because, recently, I\u2019ve been drinking large amounts of vodka.\u00a0 Yes, this is a problem, but only because I have a problem with you.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n As I lay there, sleeping like a drunken baby and stuffing a pair of urine-stained underwear in my mouth whilst dreaming of some former girlfriend, the four page review flickered innocently on my computer screen.\u00a0 I had given the movie two stars, tearing it apart because, though somewhat entertaining, it left a strange and metallic taste in my mouth whenever there was an exciting plot twist and I greedily gulped vodka from my pewter \u201cHBO\u2019s OZ\u201d mug.\u00a0 Then, at precisely 3am, I was woken by the shocking sound of my otherwise reliable computer having a shutdown meltdown freakout blowup.\u00a0 I lay there, staring at the clock, waiting for the reboot, and, five minutes later, I went into Word.\u00a0 Was my four page review recovered?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 And this from my super-sensitive MS Word that recovers blank documents.\u00a0 Not since I\u2019ve bought this computer have I lost a document.\u00a0 But Emily Rose?\u00a0 Gone.\u00a0 At 3am.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s somewhat freakish and bizarre, in the Robert Graves study of coincidence way, and I must assume that Satan is in my life.\u00a0 Therefore, I\u2019ll add a star to the movie, bringing it in at three stars and a vodka-addled recommendation under the chick flick horror category.\u00a0 I won\u2019t turn around and change my opinion because, no matter what Satan does to me, he is still a fucking pussy in the movie.<\/span><\/p>\n I can\u2019t defend him, even if he reboots my computer every five minutes.\u00a0 How does he fuck with people in the movie?\u00a0 He stops their clocks.\u00a0 He drains the batteries of their generic wall clocks.\u00a0 He is an \u201cominous\u201d presence in your dark living room.\u00a0 Sure he rapes Emily Rose, but he can\u2019t do much else.\u00a0 The movie starts after Emily has died from her exorcism.\u00a0 We\u2019re off to court!\u00a0 The People v. Emily\u2019s do-gooder priest who \u201cmust tell Emily\u2019s story\u201d so that all of us \u2013 yes, you and me and Satan \u2013 can know the sacrifice she made (\u201cbased on a true story,\u201d you can visit Emily\u2019s grave).\u00a0 Emily\u2019s \u201csacrifice\u201d comes from a dream she told her priest on her deathbed where she was called to heaven, met the Virgin Mary, and was told that she can die and leave her possessed body behind or she can stay and suffer for another hour or two and make the great sacrifice of going to glory and heaven at 4am instead of 3am.\u00a0 So\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n Well, anyway, if I were in the back booth at the bar I\u2019d ask \u2013 When did Mary become God?\u00a0 How\u2019d all that come to pass?\u00a0 Is she the fourth<\/em> part of the Trinity?<\/span><\/p>\n So we follow the course of Laura Linney (Love Actually, Mystic River, Mothman Prophecies<\/em>) who plays the \u201cagnostic\u201d who must defend Emily\u2019s priest.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t believe in shit\u2026except, apparently, for Satan.\u00a0 Because she sure gets creeped out easily, and she sure believes in being guided by a more powerful hand, and she sure respects Da Vinci Code mysticism at the drop of a hat.\u00a0 See, if you don\u2019t believe, then you aren\u2019t really all agog when your clock stops at 3am.\u00a0 You go, hmmm, fucking clock.\u00a0 Wonder if I have a D battery around?<\/span><\/p>\n She guides us through frequent flashbacks to Emily\u2019s possession which are, actually, more entertaining than the modern day scenes.\u00a0 Of course, they can\u2019t tell that story straight, because they\u2019ve ripped The Exorcist<\/em> so much that you\u2019re waiting for pea soup\u2026but, alas, all you get are shiny contact lenses and spider-eating.<\/span><\/p>\n Tom Wilkinson (Batman Begins<\/em>, and an excellent turn in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind<\/em>, as well as every other movie you\u2019ve seen) plays the troubled Father Moore, Emily\u2019s exorcist who now faces jail time for her murder.\u00a0 But, of course, we all know that he\u2019s an innocent man.\u00a0 It\u2019s okay if Satan slams Emily against the wall, takes a tumble out of the window, and otherwise commits acts of teenage girl self-abuse.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Wilkinson is, as always, wonderful.\u00a0 So wonderful that you wonder what Laura Linney\u2019s doing there.\u00a0 Laura, Tom.\u00a0 Tom, Laura.\u00a0 Laura, go home.<\/span><\/p>\n Campbell Scott, another actor you\u2019ve also seen in every movie, plays the stoic religious prosecutor.\u00a0 He\u2019s been selected by the DA \u2013 whose staff includes fucking Aaron Douglas, who plays Tyrol on Battlestar Galactica,<\/em> and the, yes, satanically beautiful ChelahHorsdal, who you can see totally nude in Showtime\u2019s current Masters of Horror<\/em> series.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t use the word nude lightly.\u00a0 I\u2019m 31 and single.\u00a0 When I say nude, you can trust me, podjo.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n These three battle it out in the courtroom of love, where a pleasantly mixed jury represents just about everyone in America.\u00a0 As I said, that\u2019s you and me and Satan.<\/span><\/p>\n Jennifer Carpenter is Emily, who actually is a religious nut in real life, but she does a great job playing the Midwest dirt scrabbler gone evil.\u00a0 Raped by Satan, she slowly devolves into Scary Girl Number Nine and, complete with cracking her spine, staring with unblinking eyes and talking in a guttural voice, she delivers.\u00a0 She\u2019s the only reason the movie gets any stars from me.\u00a0 I\u2019ll tell you, it\u2019s worth a watch because the shit they have her do is just terrific.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Where we fall is with Laura Linney\u2019s journey from agnosticism to thinking that something is up.\u00a0 Poor, dumb Linney is told, from Wilkinson\u2019s usual position of the misguided and corrupt father figure, that \u201cthere are forces surrounding this trial… dark, powerful forces.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Linney then begins to experience mild supernatural phenomena that follow the case, and Wilkinson\u2019s warnings, to the letter\u2026and we\u2019re supposed to jump.\u00a0 But, why?\u00a0 She\u2019s immersed in the trial for weeks, her job is on the line, she\u2019s under intense pressure.\u00a0 We\u2019d all start to hallucinate.\u00a0 And, unfortunately, that\u2019s what you\u2019re thinking when you should be thinking \u2013 is Satan in her kitchen eating tangerines?!?!<\/span><\/p>\n And that\u2019s also the problem,\u00a0 Satan fucks up Emily, and it\u2019s freaky.\u00a0 When he finally reveals himself in a barn, animals going nuts, Emily\u2019s family shattered, a storm blowing across the midnight plains, I was sitting in the dark hugging myself and giggling in the ecstatic rush that only a horror flick can deliver.\u00a0 But when Linney does her best Jodi Foster and explores her house at 3am, after all of her clocks have stopped, and the ominous music plays as the camera slowly pans over her blah living room, what are we thinking?\u00a0 We\u2019re thinking, Laura, you need to put more locks on your door, because you\u2019re an 80 pound woman living alone.\u00a0 When\u2019s the next flashback? <\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019re supposed to question whether or not Satan is real, I suppose.\u00a0 Even then \u2013 even in scary Emily \u2013 Satan seems ineffectual.\u00a0 At least in The Exorcist<\/em>, Satan had some punch.\u00a0 Fuck off priest or I\u2019ll vomit all over you!\u00a0 With Emily Rose, Satan says, fuck off priest\u2026i-i-if you don\u2019t mind.\u00a0 Sorry.\u00a0 Terribly sorry.\u00a0 Excuse me, I need to descale the teapot now.<\/span><\/p>\n If all Satan can do is be scary \u2013 then bring him on.<\/span><\/p>\n Nacho\u2019s vodka rating:\u00a0 Three stars.\u00a0 One for scary Jenny Carpenter, one for effective flashback freakouts, and one because Satan erased my old review<\/span><\/p>\n No tits, one terrific pedestrian killing, a showdown in a barn that ranks as one of my top Fight Satan and Fail scenes, Laura Linney drinking in every single scene, and ChelahHorsdal.\u00a0 Check it out!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[403,353],"class_list":["post-2571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-cult-culture","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2571"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2695,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2571\/revisions\/2695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}