The film is a curious meta-cinematic game that pays tribute to the filming of the classic ‘The Exorcist’
During the filming of the movie ‘The Exorcist III’, actor Jason Miller had reached such heights in his alcoholism that he suffered from a condition called “wet brain”, so he was no longer able to memorize dialogues, so Miller was unable to complete his scenes, and director and writer William Petter Blatty rewrote the role to share it with two actors, the second being Brad Dourif, a sad anecdote, but one that defines everything that ‘The Georgetown Exorcism’ tells.
Appearing out of nowhere, this premiere passes as another exploitation of possessions with Russell Crowe after his incarnation of Father Amorth in ‘The Pope’s Exorcist’, in addition, it has arrived in Spain before anywhere in the world. The actor plays an actor who plays an exorcist, a curious meta twist after confirming that he will continue making films from the other franchise, however, this one was filmed much earlier. So much so that it was already ready before the pandemic and has been “shelved” until now, at a time when religious horror is exploding.
A candy for ‘The Exorcist’ fetishists
Perhaps because Miramax has gone through turbulent times after the Weinstein case, perhaps because they wanted to wait for the release of the sequel ‘The Exorcist: Believer’, perhaps because there were problems in the filmed material that were not easy to solve, but somehow this curiosity, previously titled ‘The Georgetown project’ has arrived in theaters masked as another film about second-rate possessions with which it is related in an unexpected way, almost as if it were a parody of this type of budget projects.
In reality ‘The Georgetown Exorcism’ is an interesting annex to the filming of the original ‘The Exorcist’, which It only makes sense by understanding the drama of Miller’s later alcoholism, the original Damien Karras, as the film is directed by his son, Joshua John Miller. It is not trivial that he is the one who directs the story of an actor who plays an exorcist. Crowe is the alter ego of his father, and even the script explicitly points out the great problem mentioned in memorizing lines in the filming of the original sequel due to alcohol and drugs.
In fact, that fall into the abyss and inability to shoot his film is the basis of this other one; JJ Miller was also an actor in many horror films and is also the brother of Jason Patric, iconic vampire in ‘Hidden Youth’, so horror and filming are an important part of the family legacy, and this is key in this plot, that has a daughter dealing with her father’s relapse in the middle of a shootwith which there is a certain real exorcism of past traumas and a kind of paternal-filial piety that dialogues with reality in a quite intense way.
Trauma Atonement and Absent Father
Miller seems to be offering forgiveness to his father and telling about his relationship with him, laying bare his demons through a genre film that is not too interested in big scenes and set pieces, but in creating a gloomy, melancholic and quite bitter atmosphere for suggest a story of redemption. In fact, More than an exorcism film, the main model of the film is rather ‘The Shining’, and how possession is similar to the plummet into addiction, with the difference that instead of a haunted hotel, it is a filming.
This also connects with Mike Flanagan’s ‘Doctor Sleep’, the vicissitudes of sobriety and its relationship with the church in ‘Midnight Mass’. But here the idea is also to plan the filming in Georgetown, the city of the original classic, which makes the film within the film practically the real ‘The Exorcist’. The plot is played step by step and until there is a reproduction of the settings, lighting and subtle meta anecdotes which fans of the mythology surrounding Friedkin’s classic will recognize.
It is no coincidence that Kevin Williamson appears either as a producer, although the meta character of this has more to do with the filming of ‘Wes Craven’s New Nightmare’ than with his later ‘Scream’. His fetishism even turns her into a kind of ‘The shadow of the vampire‘ that changes ‘Nosferatu’ for Pazuzu, although here the demon that pulls the strings is Moloch, the same one that circulates in the recent ‘The Last Late Night’, so the film festival has a double program with the same entity waiting for us .
Tradition of cursed filming
‘The Georgetown Exorcism’, however, would belong more to horror movie lore about altered horror movie shoots by a supernatural element, since ‘The house of seven corpses‘, going by ‘The diabolical entity’, ‘A cat in the brain‘ or ‘Berberian Sound Studio’. But in this case, the haunted set of the film also enters into conversation with reality, since the production of ‘The Exorcist’ is famous for its “curse” in which there were accidents in the filming studio and there were even members of the cast dead.
In its game of cinema within the cinema, the film allows himself some inside jokes with the “drama wrapped in horror film” genre with which some directors try to escape the stigma and dare to put an African-American girl as the possessed one, almost like a future meta-joke to the casting choice of ‘The Exorcist: Believer’. Another joke for ‘Frasier’ fans is how David Hyde Pierce admits to having a degree in psychiatry, despite being a priest versed in demonic issues.
Russell Crowe shows that he is perfect at a Pope’s party or in this meta elegy which entails editing problems and tends towards a final rush that asked for something more in line with the reflective tone with which it works during the footage. However, even with its problems, it is a sweetheart for the connoisseurs of the intrastory of the most important supernatural horror film of all time, perhaps coffee for very coffee lovers, but a very worthy complement on the phenomenon that may be coffee for very coffee lovers, but not a bad coffee.
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