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| Image by Stephen Whitmore |
Very few horror movies have really made an impact on popular culture. Most go forgotten on a year-to-year basis because they do little to bring the genre forward. However, occasionally, a film makes it into the limelight in a big way and impacts the wider culture. The Exorcist was one such movie.
One thing critics and audiences have agreed on is that The Exorcist was a well-made movie in terms of craftsmanship. Though it faced a lengthy, difficult production period fraught with uphill legal battles, the film ultimately was a huge commercial success, and was hailed by many at the time as "the scariest movie ever made". Its religious content and unorthodox, innovative sound design had never really been seen in a feature-length film before. The Exorcist, like most great films throughout history, was a work of controversy.
Around the year of The Exorcist's release, 1973, including religious content in a commercial film was a controversial practice in general. This is partly why the movie's writer William Peter Blatty, adapting one of his own novels for the film version, was both so eager and so careful in writing the film. He ultimately won an Oscar for his work, and for good reason. The religiously-centered script attracted attention to the film; some felt it portrayed traditional medicine in a very negative light by comparison. The Exorcist brought with it the new idea that a horror movie could challenge its audience and make them think, something that very few theatrical releases seem to be trying to do today.
The Exorcist also featured excellent audio design, for which it won a second Oscar. The sound engineers working on the film used a variety of sources and mixing techniques to create the sparse, ambient soundtrack and effects heard on the final cut of the film. Samples included raw eggs being swallowed, among other strange sounds. Sound design is something the average movie goer probably doesn’t spend a lot of time considering, but just try watching a suspenseful film with the sound off for a demonstration of how much is added by sound designers. The Exorcist didn't just push sound design forward for horror movies, but indeed, sound design for movies in general.
The religious overtones found in The Exorcist were expanded upon by imitators for years, and still frequently appear in film today. The film could even be said to have spawned a new sub-genre of horror movie: the possession film.
That isn't The Exorcist's most important contribution to horror cinema, however. The Exorcist pushed not simply the plot and audio of horror movies forward, but helped change the entire way in which horror films work to entertain an audience. It's arguable that no movie before The Exorcist was so personal, and so psychological in trying to be scary. The Exorcist achieved a sparse, ambient, dream-like tone (partially accomplished with subliminal messaging) that horror films today still struggle to match. The audience feels just as disconnected from the events of the movie as Linda Blair's character does from reality. This was among the first films to intentionally connect with its audience on a subconscious level.
Reception upon The Exorcist's release was mixed. Many critics were too distracted by an infamous scene in which Blair's character, possessed by a demon, vomits repeatedly (the famous “pea soup” scene) to understand why it was an important film. Labeling this scene as particularly gratuitous, many film critics were outraged that the movie didn't receive an X rating, rather than an R. This is ironic, considering how integral graphic, violent acts were to the film's tone. As time has passed, the majority of film critics have changed their stance on The Exorcist, and as many and more films have surpassed the grotesqueness seen in The Exorcist, few have matched its atmosphere of dread.
Video games have been perhaps a bit better at capturing the kind of psychological terror films like The Exorcist essentially invented, perhaps because games are themselves more personal experiences that movies. For instance, one of the most popular series of horror video games, Silent Hill, uses psychological terror against players, forcing them to question the sanity of their own characters. The games also draw on a desolate atmosphere with a strong sense of insecurity - and of course, eerie and effective sound design. Like The Exorcist, these games are successful because they are unpleasant experiences.
Author Bio
Alex Smith is a freelance television and film blogger for DirectTVDeal.com. When he isn’t enjoying horror films and video games he spends his time lamenting the current state of the horror genre, and looking for slasher and sci-fi horror flicks from the 1970s and 80s that he hasn’t seen yet.