Review of Exorcist: The Beginning

With all that talk in 1973's "The Exorcist" about Father Merrin's previous encounter with demonic possession in Africa, it certainly wasn't going to be forgotten by the folks at Warner Bros. there was a potential thriller there. John Boorman covered some of that ground in flashbacks for "Exorcist II: The Heretic" in 1977, but this full-blown prequel should satisfy die-hard "Exorcist" fans, if nobody else. In post-WWII Egypt, Merrin has turned his back on the church and become an archaeologist; during an expedition in Kenya, he encounters demonic hyenas, a possessed child, ritualistic murders, and lots of flies. Working from a paper-thin script (which cobbles together images copied from the original "Exorcist", along with several other horror films), director Renny Harlin is reverent to the classic predecessor without knowing how to give his picture any personality of its own. Dark and dour, and weighed down further with perpetually glum and exhausted Stellan Skarsgård as Merrin, the film's incidental pleasures are purely unintentional. The director of cinematography goes positively bonkers with his close-ups of liquor and water glasses, and Harlin himself stoops to the lowest form of thriller clichés with fake scares, dream scenes, oozing sores, doors opening and closing by themselves, upside-down crucifixes...everything but the real "Exorcist"'s panache. *1/2 from ****