Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005)

The great Paul Schrader wrote and directed 'Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist'. The suites at Warner Brother so disliked what they saw, that they more then doubled what they'd already invested to extensively reshoot it as a more conventional film under Renny Harlin. That film they released as 'Exorcist: The Beginning' and that film is a jumbled, hyperactive, awful mess. It also made only a modest profit so the studio put out Schrader's version the following year, and it's night and day. 

I feel like when the studio greenlit this movie they must have had in mind the idea of another 'scariest movie ever made', that was the through line they wanted. What Schrader produced was not genera horror, as studios would have understood it in the early 2000's. What it is, is a rumination on faith crises and the problem of evil, in short a Paul Schrader movie, but with some horror stuff thrown in. 

'Thrown in' isn't exactly accurate, it's there, and it's earned. There are some disturbing moments, but many of them subtle. The movie tells the story of Father Merrin (here played by Stellen Skarsgard), a disillusion Catholic Priest of Dutch extraction, now an archeologist on a dig in the British East Africa of 1947. An ancient church is found where no such church should be, and the mystery of why it was built, and why it was deliberate buried shortly after completion, brings Father Merrin into his first, but not last, encounter with the demon Pazuzu. 

This is finally structured, very much thought out, very much a particular vision, cobbling together some kind of alternate story for the reshoot must have been a bitch. There are many, many distinctions between the two films, but for me what encapsulates them most is the recasting of the female doctor from the understated beauty of Clara Bellar, to Bond girl Izabella Scorupco. The recut, to put it very mildly, greatly cheapened and vulgarized Schrader's vision. 

After the astounding original film, the 'Exorcist' sequels haven't been very good. I've watched all of them for the first time this month and Schrader's is the only one of them that worked for me, that felt like it properly fit into the world of the original movie. Yes I'm including Exorcist III, which was written and directed by the writer of the original story William Peter Blatty. That movie felt like it betrayed the central message of the first film, Schrader's movie feels like it understands that message more then even the man who created it. 

This film is not perfect, it is not the equal of the original, but it compliments it and fleshes out Father Merrin's backstory in a way that worked. This story about how Father Merrin's faith in God was restored, restored my faith in the idea of Exorcist sequels. ***