THE EXORCISM

Here's the honest decision. THE EXORCISM has real assets — Russell Crowe leading a solid cast of veterans and talented newcomers, some genuine scares, and even a somewhat happy ending where Christian sacrifice carries the day. On paper, a story about a father protecting his daughter from a demon should have something for a discerning viewer.

But the movie undoes itself. The plot is jumbled and messy, some scenes are simply confusing, and the content piles up past any reasonable line: roughly 49 obscenities including about 41 "f" words, five profane references to Jesus, some extreme bloody violence, and a politically correct lesbian subplot the film openly endorses against the biblical view. Its theology is muddled too — the characters lean on angels and saints rather than going directly to Jesus.

So the practical answer is simple: skip it. The excessive language alone is a serious problem, and it travels alongside a position on sexual sin that Scripture doesn't share.

Tony (Russell Crowe) is a widowed, middle-aged actor clawing his way back from years lost to alcohol and drugs — years that cost him his marriage and the trust of his teenage daughter, Lee. Now sober, he wants to rebuild.

A job comes his way: he's hired to replace the actor who was playing the priest in an exorcism movie — the actor who died. Filming begins well enough. Then Tony starts acting strangely, sleepwalking, bleeding without cause. Lee wonders whether her father is relapsing, or whether something far darker has taken hold.

Two stars, and here's what earns them. The cast is the real draw — seasoned pros alongside promising newcomers who deliver some effective scares and some interesting conflict. When the film leans on its actors and its central father-daughter tension, it works, and the ending lands a note of Christian sacrifice that the story genuinely builds toward.

The trouble is the scaffolding around them. The plotline is jumbled and messy, and more than a few scenes simply confuse rather than clarify. A horror film lives or dies by its control of dread, and this one keeps losing the thread. The result is a movie with better performances than it deserves and a script that can't hold them together — competent pieces inside a picture that never fully coheres.

THE EXORCISM wants to be a story about faith defeating evil, and in places it reaches for that. Christian sacrifice and action win the day, a father is finally able to protect his daughter, and a Christian cross appears as a weapon against the demon. Those are real gestures toward a biblical hope.

But the film's theology is mixed and, finally, off-center. The lapsed-Catholic hero — a former altar boy — calls on the Virgin Mary and a crowd of angels and saints to intercede against the demon. He never simply goes to Jesus and speaks to Him directly. That misplaced reliance is the movie's spiritual confusion in miniature: reaching past the only name that saves.

The film also carries a politically correct homosexual subplot, and its sympathies are plain. Lee kisses a female teenage actress, and the story frames her anger over a fired lesbian counselor as righteous, siding openly with sexual sin against the historic Christian position. One character rightly names an act of vandalism as vandalism — but the movie's heart is elsewhere. This is an antinomian stance the source finds indefensible.

Underneath the horror is a true longing: to be delivered from evil by a power greater than ourselves. Scripture answers it with a name, not a committee of intercessors — "there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

There's a better film buried in here — a strong cast, a father fighting for his daughter, a flicker of Christian hope at the end. But it's smothered by relentless profanity, extreme bloody violence, muddled theology, and a subplot that celebrates what Scripture calls sin. So our answer stands: skip it. Looking for something worth your evening instead? Try our latest family-friendly picks.