8/24/04 by mushingirl

It is no secret I am not a fan of scary movies. My room mate, Steven, practically had to drag me to see the new Exocist prequil, Exorcist: The Beginning.
I had only seen the original twice and have never seen any of the other ones. The last time I saw the original it had to be in broad daylight because I don't to scary movies well.
So Steven drags me off to the newest installment of the Exorcist chain late on Sunday. There are five or six people in the theatre with us as the film begins.
The best, most spectacular portion of the film took place at the very beginning (appropriately so) when we see an ancient priest walking through hundreds of war fallen corpses. He comes to his destination, a fallen priest of the same order (the robes are a dead give away) who is clutching the little devil's head idol from the second movie (Steven told me about it).
The devil shows he is attached to this idol (stolen from the episode of the Brady Bunch when they all went to Hawaii and Greg had that really bad surfing accident) by making the wind blow a whole lot and putting all of the corpses behind the priest on inverted crosses. That is one fast devil.
From there the movie goes down hill, fast.
We are soon introduced to a young Father Merrin at some European cafe in 1949. A mysterious stranger whom we shall call Mr. Plotdevice retains his services to retreive an artifact, the little devil's head.
In the blatantly expositive scene we learn that Mr. Merrin is no longer a priest. He had a bad experience with the Nazis and left the priesthood. He then studied archeology (I wish I could spell) at Oxford, bought an Indiana Jones costume, minus the whip, and began stealing artifacts for money.
He reluctantly takes the job. He goes to Kenya, the site of a church that is way further south than it should be, to investigate.
From here we are treated to overly graphic gore and haunted house pop scare moments as the director hammer handedly gives us clues as to what is going on.
In the end there is a big battle in a dungeon setting between Merrin and a possesed white chick with big boobs. She tosses out the obligatory "fuck me" dialogue and hisses at the holy water while a small black child watches the fight.
In the end, and I know this is a shocker, they ecorcise Lucifer from the blonde chick and everyone lives happily ever after. At least until the Merrin character takes on Linda Blaire in the first movie and everything.
The Yahoo movies feature online gave the movie a grade of D+. The Boston Globe said it was an "...interminably grisly waste."
I say, if you like seeing a lot of maggots and half eaten corpses go see this film. If you want to see flash back sequences three and four times, just to make sure you get it go see this film. If you want to see a battle between a possesed, big boobed chick that is blatantly CGI and resembles the final stages of a dungeon crawl more than an exorcism go see this film.
If you want to be really, really scared, go rent the origingal or Scream or something cause this movie blows.