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August 20, 2005
You can't out-exorcist The Exorcist: on Emily Rose
Edward Douglas from ComingSoon asks Exorcism of Emily Rose writer-director Scott Derrickson about inevitable comparisons: "I am a big fan of that picture, but I think if you're going to make an exorcism movie of any kind, you have a certain burden to carry... The subject matter is profoundly compelling, and I think that everybody knows it is a real phenomenon out in the world whether you believe there's anything spiritual to it or not. It happens. People get exorcisms. There are lots of stories of cases, and that fact alone makes it interesting. What I wanted to do was approach the subject matter in a less exploitive way, because you can't out-exorcist The Exorcist. You have to almost go under it... To really frighten a contemporary audience you just can't do that with special effects and sound and camera tricks. [There] are manipulative tricks of the trade that were implemented that were extraordinary at the time, but now that same sort of approach has been used in a million different horror films... My intention was for the effectiveness of the horror elements and the exorcism itself to be rooted in the reality of these real characters, portrayed by great actors, and for the phenomenon that you watch to be very counterintuitive, but not over the top... What we're trying to do is make a movie that's a little bit more of an exploration of what does [an exorcism] really look like, what's the range of possibilities there and what can it mean?"
Posted by pride at August 20, 2005 12:49 PM
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