The Exorcist – Director’s Cut
Screening Dates:
Thu 31 October 11:00pm
Director: William Friedkin
Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Max Sydow, Lee Cobb, Kitty Winn, Linda Blair
William Friedkin‘s exemplary essay on suspense and edge-of-seat audience manipulation, which is still one of the scariest films ever made, comes to the big screen for the first time in 10 years. With Linda Blair as the apparently normal 12-year-old girl whose body is possessed by the Devil, Max Von Sydow’s saintly adversary and Jason Miller as the troubled priest who must confront the demon within and without.
The director’s version includes previously cut footage including some unseen and genuinely unsettling additional effects.
**** “IT STIMULATES AND REWARDS, TIME AND TIME AGAIN” Empire
Critic: Gene Siskel
Date: 2013-01-18
Publication: Chicago Tribune
Quote: I loved it.
Critic: Desson Thomson
Date: 2012-10-08
Publication: Washington Post
Quote: It's good stuff but, basically, The Exorcist is a museum piece, something to be enjoyed for its historical value, its datedness and its almost quaint shock value.
Critic: Owen Gleiberman
Date: 2011-09-07
Publication: Entertainment Weekly
Quote: Some movies aren't just movies. They're closer to voodoo -- they channel currents larger and more powerful than themselves.
Critic: Jay Cocks
Date: 2008-08-24
Publication: TIME Magazine
Quote: Friedkin and Blatty seem to care nothing for their characters as people, only as victims-props to be abused, hurled about the room, beaten and, in one case, brutally murdered.
Critic: Vincent Canby
Date: 2008-03-19
Publication: New York Times
Quote: The Exorcist is not an unintelligently put-together film, which makes one all the more impatient with it.
Critic: Roger Ebert
Date: 2007-09-21
Publication: Chicago Sun-Times
Quote: If movies are, among other things, opportunities for escapism, then The Exorcist is one of the most powerful ever made.
Critic: Peter Travers
Date: 2007-09-21
Publication: Rolling Stone
Quote: There's something elemental about The Exorcist.
Critic: James Berardinelli
Date: 2007-09-21
Publication: ReelViews
Quote: There is nothing dated about The Exorcist, which remains an effective excursion into demonic possession more than a quarter of a century after it was first unveiled to the public.
Critic: Variety Staff
Date: 2007-09-21
Publication: Variety
Quote: An expert telling of a supernatural horror story.
Critic: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: 2007-09-21
Publication: Chicago Reader
Quote: This 1973 horror thriller is highly instructive as well as unnerving.
