The Exorcist
1973
Director: William Friedkin
Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Linda Blair, Jason Miller
About a year ago, my husband and my sister accompanied me to a screening of The Exorcist. Neither of them had seen it before, and I hadn’t seen it in over 10 years, and even then, it was under less than ideal circumstances. Essentially, all three of us were seeing it for the first time, knowing little about it other than the classic sequences of Linda Blair’s head turning all the way around and the spewing of the pea soup. After the film ended, the three of us stood in the lobby and just looked at one another blankly.
After a few minutes, we finally got up the nerve to speak.
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“That was… um… intense.”
“Uh, YEAH.”
“Oh my god, that was so good.”
“TOTALLY.”
All right, so our critiques weren’t exactly eloquent, but The Exorcist had temporarily removed our ability to link thoughts with words. It’s that good a film.
