Contradicting Popular Opinion: The Exorcism of Emily Rose

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Contradicting Popular Opinion
A.K.A.

An Enquiry Concerning Why Your Favorite Movie Sucks

:The Exorcism of Emily Rose

intro
If the movie Congo taught us anything, it was that Laura Linney occasionally bases artistic decisions on things other than artistic merit. (To translate into the vernacular: She will make a shitburger occasionally. Linney gots to get paid yo!)

Okay, I guess Congo did teach us more. I also learned from that punishingly stupid flick that talking monkeys suck as hard as smoking monkeys rock. (A very complex theorem, I assure you.)

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

So, there are some benefits to not believing in an immortal soul. One of them is being able to see just how ridiculously silly many supernatural movies are. Although I must say, it doesn’t often require a non-religious perspective to note the intrinsic goofiness of most films with haunted houses, body swaps, demonic possessions or hirsute witches.

But every once in a while, you encounter a film that tries to be obscure in its attack on common sense. Emily Rose does this thing by both professing its protagonist as initially skeptical and by attempting to gain credibility by placing the majority of scenes in a courtroom, the disinterested home of truth (well, at least ideally).

Of course, my personal disbelief would have been better suspended if the film were competent enough to remember who its jury foreperson was. So it goes. Suspension of disbelief seems to work best when one doesn’t pay attention. For the most part, Emily‘s obfuscation of incompetence is successful, with many believing that the flick is something better than your average silly horror flick.

It’s not.

As a matter of fact, it is one of the most insulting horror films I have ever seen. (I’ve seen a lot.) It is irresponsible, irrational and disgusting (and not in that fun way). Let’s do a quick overview of the flick.

Emily Rose is an allegedly bright and charming young Catholic who goes away to college to be a schoolteacher and to escape her painfully Canadian household. While education is her major, her minor is unfortunately demonic possession. (It’s funny how the little buggers prefer possessing Catholics.) Anyways, the demon likes to possess her at 3 in the morning because that is somehow the opposite of the time that Christ was crucified on the first Good Friday.

I have to stop for a couple of notes here. First off, are Christians the only folk who refer to the day in which their god was killed as “Good”? I think we might have a misnomer.

Second, and I could be wrong on this part, why would demons care about time zones? Say you believe in this Jesus character, and that he died at 3PM. Wouldn’t the demon be happy about the 3PM thing? Wouldn’t he want to possess people at 3PM to celebrate the death of the Christ? And if he were to choose 3AM to somehow mock the zombie carpenter, would he bother doing it on Vancouver time? (Or wherever the hell they were supposed to be. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Yellowknife.) What does 3 o’clock mean to a demon anyway? Do devils wear wrist watches? Do they observe daylight savings? The mind boggles.

Anyways, after being demon raped and occasionally wandering the surprisingly dark and empty dorm halls (college kids are always asleep at 3 ya know?) she decides that the whole university experience might not be for her. Silly doctors diagnose her with a form of epilepsy and provide her medication. The meds aren’t effective right away and bafflingly enough nobody seems too interested in doing any follow up work. (Socialized medicine makes for lazy doctors one would guess.) Instead, Emily’s parents decide to turn to their Catholic priest to rid their daughter of her unholy spirits, not realizing that he is secretly Juntao and is responsible for kidnapping that little Asian girl in Rush Hour.

Anyways, they decide to rid Emily of her various mental disorders by ritualized prayer. The priest tries his best to stop the girl from cutting herself, counting to six and saying that she is possessed by the goblins who dwelt in Cain, Judas, Nero and Professor X’s son Legion. Unfortunately, the Pastor’s method doesn’t work out too well either. You see, that damned modern medicine has somehow trapped the demon inside of Emily Rose. So the girl dies, but everything is okay because it was all part of God’s plan. I guess. You see, the big G wanted to start a word of mouth advertising campaign, and he figured that nothing would prove his existence more than this story.

G-funk once again proves his dearth of reasoning skills. For one, even if Laura Linney and company were capable of proving the existence of demons in court, such a thing does nothing to prove His existence. Secondly, the whole affair shows what a giant dick God is. He, in his infinite power and wisdom, lets demons kill a perfectly nice girl so that more folks will believe in him? “I am powerful and loving! In order to prove this thing, watch as I do nothing to prevent this girl from dying a slow and painful death!”

I guess Yahweh works in mysterious ways. Unfortunately, if I paid my taxes in mysterious ways, I’d be in jail.

The most disgusting part of this flick is how it is pimped as being “Based on a True Story.” Fuck that shit. Here is the story as told by Randi from a commentary written before the film’s release.

The fictional Emily Rose was, in real life, Anneliese Michel, a Bavarian. She was born September 21, 1952, and was a normal, religious girl. Then one day in her 16th year, she began shaking uncontrollably. The Psychiatric Clinic of Wurzburg diagnosed her with “Grand Mal” epilepsy. Because of the strength of the fits, and the severity of the depression that followed, Anneliese was admitted for treatment at the local hospital.

Soon after the attacks began, Anneliese adopted the conviction that she was “possessed,” an easy delusion to slip into because of her religious background. She needed no other explanation for the visions she experienced during her prayers. She began hearing voices of what she was sure were demons, who gave her orders. The doctors could offer her little help, and she lost hope that they were going to be able to cure her. She began taking the medication usually prescribed for such a malady.

A few years after she was first afflicted with this ailment, her parents began taking her to various priests to request an exorcism. They were rejected and given recommendations that the now 20-year-old girl should continue with the prescribed medication and treatment. They were told that unless all the criteria of a “genuine” demonic possession were met, an exorcism could not be offered. Validation would call for such symptoms as an aversion to religious objects, speaking in languages that the person had never studied, and having supernatural powers.

In 1974, after supervising Anneliese for some time, Pastor Ernst Alt requested an official church permit to perform the exorcism. The request was at first rejected, and the recommendation was made that Anneliese should live even more of a religious lifestyle in order to find peace. The attacks did not diminish, and her behavior became more erratic. She became insulting, she beat and began biting other members of her family, and refused to eat because, she said, the demons would not allow it. She slept on the stone floor, ate insects and coal, and began destroying religious objects such as crucifixes, paintings of Jesus, and rosaries.

Then, having in some way verified to his satisfaction the genuine nature of the possession in September of 1975, Josef Stangl, the Bishop of Wurzburg, ordered Father Arnold Renz and Pastor Alt to perform “The Great Exorcism” ceremony on Miss Michel. Their examination had determined that the young woman was inhabited by several demons, including Cain, Adolf Hitler, Judas Iscariot, Lucifer, and Nero, as well as a disgraced priest from the 16th century and some other souls which had “manifested” through her. From then until July 1976, exorcism sessions were conducted weekly. The girl’s attacks were sometimes so strong that she would have to be chained up, or at least held down by three men while the magic was performed.

In spite of all this heavy intervention, the attacks did not stop. In fact, Anneliese would often fall into paralysis and unconsciousness even more often than before. The relentless exorcism continued over many months, with prayers and incantations flowing freely. For several weeks, Anneliese refused all food. On the last day of the exorcism, totally emaciated, suffering from pneumonia, and with broken knees from the 600 genuflections she performed during the daily ceremonies, Miss Michel fell unconscious. She died the following day, July 1st, 1976. Soon, charges of negligent homicide were brought against Anneliese’s parents and the two exorcists, Renz and Alt.

Before these final events had taken place, the film “The Exorcist” (1974) had been to cinemas in Germany; as a result, psychiatrists all over Europe reported an increase of obsessive ideas among their patients. It was more than two years before the Michel case came to court, with only two questions being posed: What caused the death of Anneliese Michel, and who was responsible for it?

According the forensic evidence, Anneliese had literally starved to death. If forced feeding had been performed as little as one week before her death, she would have lived. In their trial, the exorcists actually tried to prove the presence of the demons by playing taped recordings of strange, fanciful, dialogues such as that of two demons arguing about which one of them would first have to leave Anneliese’s body. Said the priests, not one of those present during the exorcism ever had any doubt about the actual existence and presence of the demons.

The verdict was not what might have been expected: Anneliese’s parents and the exorcists were found guilty of manslaughter due to negligence and failing to administer first aid. They were sentenced to six months in jail, and probation.

A church commission later declared that Anneliese Michel had not been possessed, but superstition carried the day; her corpse was exhumed – eleven and a half years after her burial – to confirm that it had decayed as would have been expected if she’d not been possessed. You see, if she’d really hosted demons, her body would have been preserved, as Bram Stoker told us; I’m surprised you didn’t know that. There is now, more than twenty years after Anneliese Michel died, a new Exorcism Rite, which is prescribed for worldwide use. I’m sure it works just as effectively as the old system. That’s progress, right?

So let’s see. We have:
A. A fairly stupid and derivative horror movie.
B. A mostly boring court drama.
C. Film-makers profiting from the death of a mentally ill girl.
D. Twisting of facts to make it seem more likely that she was possessed, and mitigate the horrifying nature of the reality of the repeated “magic” rituals.
E. A movie that blames science for hurting a young girl and preventing the effectiveness of said magic.
F. A movie that blames psychological disorders on DEMONS.

How irresponsible can one movie be? But what the hey? Avoid your doctor’s advice, it will only hurt you. Always trust the Catholic priest.

Okay f*cking demons. You can tell me that, “it is only a movie.” But don’t tell me that you are based on a TRUE STORY and then put DEMONS in your f*cking movie. Why not throw in some wolfmen and a f*cking dinosaur while you are at it? Fucking demons.

Fucking piece of shit. What a f*cking piece of shit. This film angers me enough to make me repeatedly refer to it as a f*cking piece of shit. It is worse than White Noise. Damnit Laura Linney, I’ll forgive you Congo, but this thing is going on your permanent record. Along with The Life of David Gale. At least nobody remembers that piece of shit.

Fucking piece of shit.