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Dominion:
Prequel to the Exorcist
(2005)
This film has had one of the strangest productions in recent years. Originally intended as the fourth film in the successful "Exorcist" series, and a prequel to the original film, a script was developed at the studios and the film was made, however the film’s producer decided that it wasn’t “scary enough” and after trying to re-edit the film, it was decided that the only thing to do was re-make the film, with a new director Renny Harlin, and the resulting film Exorcist:
The Beginning was released in 2004, and was a critical and commercial failure.
Opening in Holland in 1944, where Father Lankester Merrin (Stellan
Skarsgård)
is traumatised by a massacre of innocent people in his parish,
the scene quickly switches to Africa in 1947 where Merrin has lost
his faith, and works as an archaeologist. On one of his digs
he discovers an ancient church that appears to have been deliberately
buried. He also busies himself working in a small town with
the local tribespeople, with help from Rachel Lesno (Clara Bellar),
a Polish concentration camp survivor who is the local doctor,
and Father Francis (Gabriel Mann), a young idealistic priest who wants
to open a Mission school in the town. As Merrin investigates
the church he comes to believe that it was built less as a place of worship than to keep something
sealed away. Father Francis calls in a battalion of British
Army soldiers, led by the unstable Major Granville (Julian
Wadham). As the investigation of the church progresses, a wave
of violence and madness seems to seize the people in the area.
Also a young man, ostracized from the community, because of
his severe deformities, is beginning to heal at a startling
rate, and is beginning to exhibit some disturbing personality
changes.
This isn’t really a conventional horror film; it’s much more of an intelligent
psychological drama. This was apparently what caused most of the problems between
Schrader and the producer. The film is very well made, with a genuine sense of
unease, despite not being, for the most part, particularly disturbing. The film
takes the religious elements very seriously, working at it’s best as a film about
the nature of good and evil and faith.
Wisely, the special effects are mostly
kept to a minimum, although the computer generated hyenas don’t look particularly
realistic. Also, the climax lacks much of the intensity of the original Exorcist film.
Skarsgård is good and convincingly troubled as Merrin, the part which was taken
by Max Von Sydow in the original, despite the fact that, although he plays a
much younger version of Sydow’s character, Skarsgård is nearly a decade older
than Sydow was at the time of making The Exorcist (1973). I haven’t seen Exorcist:
The Beginning so I can’t say which version is better, but there was definitely
no reason to re-make this perfectly fine film.
-Robert
Foster
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All contents ©
2004-2009 Thoughtsonfilm.com |
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Director:
Paul
Schrader
Writer: William
Wisher Jr., Caleb Carr, William
Peter Blatty
Starring: Stellan
Skarsgård, Gabriel Mann, Clara Bellar, Billy Crawford,
Ralph Brown
Distributor: Warner
Bros. Pictures
Runtime: 117
min
Rating: R
Release Date: May
20, 2005
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