Just got back from a screening of the Schrader version of the Exorcist prequel - now called Dominion. Sorry, but I stayed far away from the Harlin film so I can offer no comparisons, but my friend who went with me did see it and says they are wildly different. Dominion is a very sparse thinking man's horror film that seems to be shot and paced as if it were straight out of the '70s -- when movies unfolded at a slower pace to reveal more character. It's two hours of Schrader and his cast meditating on goodness and faith, so Morgan Creek was probably right in assuming young people wouldn't flock to this version. The only problem I saw were some obviously inserted "last minute" CGI effects that really needed to be polished more. Other than that it's still going to disappoint many people who want a scary movie. It's more talky than any Exorcist movie ever made (with the possible exception of 2). And the demons are nowhere near as impressive as they were in the pea-soup flying original. Infact, it's more a meditation on if Satan or man are inseperable.

I wish it hadn't had that EXORCIST franchise label. It's really not very well connected to the first movie other than it shows Father Merrin in a crisis of faith. After some atrocities in World War II he buries himself in archeologist projects rather than religion, and stumbles across a buried church. When they begin to dig it up strange things start to happen, but these are strange events where people ACT strange -- no flying locusts or supernatural spookies. The villagers and the British soldiers begin to fight, and a strange crippled boy who is "cursed" comes out of the sandy landscape. Hyenas seem to hang around the camp, and soon people are acting ... well... un-Christian. The crippled boy is miraculously healed, but during his baptism he becomes demonic and hurls a young priest into a statue. It's up to Merrin to exorcise the boy, but first he has to exorcise his own demons of faith.

It's a solid thought-provoking movie, but it is low on jump scares or anything freaky. Dominion relies only on mood and psychology to get its evil mojo flowing. It has some very timely thoughts on the military, Christianity, and evil that all could be applied to the world today without ever devolving into a "let's bash anyone" mode. It's a good movie, but I still doubt it will be a big hit with people who were thrilled by the tale of a little girl who was possessed by a devil.

I'm beginning to wonder - are prequels pointless? No movie will ever fill in the blanks of Merrin for me as effectively as my imagination. They say in the first movie this African episode "almost killed him". Well... it doesn't. And I imagine a more horrific episode, and not some meditation on evil. It doesn't take away from Dominion to admit that it doesn't feel like a part of that first movie since really NONE of the sequels ever lived up to the scares and horrors of the first. We don't need some mysteries solved. Merrin showed up in the last 20 minutes of The Exorcist. We knew nothing about him except that he had seen this thing before, and he was ready to take it on again. Do we need to know more?