When Chris MacNeil’ s daughter Regan begin behaving strangely, Chris does what any mother would do and takes Regan to the doctors. Despite advanced technology and level of medical examination that borders on medieval torture the doctors can find no cause for Regan’s increasing bizzare and violent acts.

When Chris’s director dies mysteriously after visiting Regan Chirs is pushed out of the light of reason and enlightenment and is forced to confront the growing possibility that Reagon is possessed.

With only the help of Father Karras  a priest whose own faith has shattered, Chris must find the one person who can save Regan’s soul, The Exorcist.

Based on the hit novel by comedic writer William Peter Blatty, the movie The Exorcist shattered box-office records and became  a cultural phenomenon. Called by some as the most frightening film ever made, The exorcist is a compelling and credible treatment of supernatural evil in our world and the faith and doubt that creates.

Directed in nearly documentarian style by William Friedkin, the film relies more in the ideas underlying the concept of possession and evil than on gruesome murders. That is not to say that Friedkin avoid gruesomeness or shock, anyone who has seen this film knows otherwise.  Rather Friedkin takes the shocking and the horrific and puts it square in your face, so close you can scarcely avoid smelling it. It’s not always demonic voices, or the twisted scarred visage of a little girl that Friedkin dares you to watch. It’s also the nearly inhuman torture devices used by the men of the enlightenment — doctors — upon a suffering girl that evoke unease and horror.

This film does not work for everyone. If you are predisposed to a rationalist viewpoint, then the whole concept of possession is one that if difficult to accept from the start. The additional themes of an eternal battle between good and evil over the souls of men is also something difficult to accept from a materialist point-of-view.

However, if you can accept these things reality for a couple of hours, then this film may be for you.

I can say that the directors cut, on Blu-ray, and with a rich and details sound re-mox was a joy to watch.