Rating of
3/4
The Exorcist III - Movie Review
Matthew Brady - wrote on 10/24/16
The Exorcist III isn't nearly as brilliant as the first movie, but compare it to the sequel, it's a masterpiece. This is what I call sluggish film that you'll need a lot of patience to get to the good stuff. Well, the whole movie is kind of like that. Every time I think something is going to progress with the story it jumps right back. Luckily it doesn't do that too often and it's only for build up (i guess).
But it's not to say that "The Exorcist III" doesn't have it's scary parts, because it really dose. There's moments that are so eerie and quite shocking that the movie quickly cuts away to next scene so you don't even have a reaction or a thought of what you just seen. The movie takes a few minutes of silence as the scene plays on and then BOOM! And this actually did get to me. A great example of this is the Nurse scene which is one of the scariest scenes in movie history. During the scene you really don't get a sense of damage, but more of a safe feeling as every thing seems to be alright, until the horror kicks in. And I know that sounds very similar to every horror movie that use it's scars, but I think those movies get it completely wrong of how to make the build up and the scare executed in a way that it's effective. I think this is something that's missing in horror today.
Brad Douriff is in this movie playing The Gemini killer and he's freaking amazing. This is one of the best performances I've seen from Douriff and it just proves of how talented this guy truly is. I would go as far to say it's Oscar worthy and he isn't in the movie that much. He's so creepy and frightening that he steals the show.
But the actor that I thought was going to steal the show was George C. Scott, which is sadly not the case. He's a great actor and he was excellent in "Patton", but I found he's performance in this to be a bit over the top. I mean, I don't think he was RAZZIE worthy bad or anything, but he over reacted in the wrong parts. It came off a bit laughable. It's until the very end when he gets to shine as he's really giving it he's all. I give him that.
The interesting thing I found out about the movie (after i finished watching it) was that the author of the book William Peter Blatty wrote & directed this. You know when you hear people complaint that when a movie adaptation isn't as accurate to the novel it's based on. Well, it's kinda refreshing (to me) for an author to make the movie that he wanted to see. And I can say that he exceed in a few parts even if the whole thing feels a bit disjointed, and that goes to the writing.
Overall rating: "The Exorcist III" while not great, but at least gets back to it's roots of having a dark and unsettling atmosphere, something that was missing in "Exorcist II". The movie is honestly worth watching just for Brad Douriff performance.
