“Now, of course, evangelical Christianity has become one of the cornerstones of contemporary American life. And here we are, four decades after The Exorcist, still paying to get the bejesus scared out of us by watching a movie set in 1971 about a good woman “possessed” by her secret demon self. The Devil is here because, of course, he never left, and never will. In so many ways, he is old news. But the ritual of a horror film that reassures us by calling forth God to defeat him: That’s a conjuring we never get tired of.” -Owen Gleiberman
We don’t agree with every point, but this is a thoughtful piece, with an intriguing perspective, by longtime Entertainment Weekly film critic (and ardent movie lover) Owen Gleiberman that deserves a read… especially if you’re interested in exploring the role of God in exorcism-themed horror films.
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[ew_image url="http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/i/2013/07/24/THE-EXORCIST.jpg " credit="Everett Collection" align="none"]Last weekend, when I went to see The Conjuring, I expected to be scared, and I also thought that I was walking into a haunted-house movie. It certainly starts off as a haunted-house movie, with director James Wan throwing in every goose-the-audience gothic scare tactic (alarming blasts of music, sinister Victorian clown faces, ghostly figures popping up in mirrors) but the rattling of the kitchen sink. The film is, of course, “based on a true story,” in much the same way that virtually every rattletrap ghost thriller since The Amityville Horror (1979) has been “based on a true story.” (It really happened, folks! Step right up!) In this case, though, the presence of Ed and Lorraine Warren, a pair of legendary true-life paranormal investigators played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, really does lend the proceedings a creepy, homespun verisimilitude. Not because, as the…
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