Check Out the Trailer

The film is the story of Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter, WHITE CHICKS), a 19-year-old college student who died after stopping her prescribed medication and enduring an exorcism. At the time of her death, she was under the care of Father Moore (Tom Wilkinson, IN THE BEDROOM), who advised her to stop taking the drugs that were prescribed to her for what doctors believed was epilepsy combined with psychosis. Because of this, Father Moore is put on trial for criminal neglect.

The archdiocese, which sanctioned the exorcism and is paying for Moore’s defense, still doesn’t want to have its name drug into the courts and tarnished. They hire hotshot lawyer Erin Bruner (Laura Linney, YOU CAN COUNT ON ME) to defend the priest. She is an agnostic, who is coming off a high-profile murder trial, and wants to make partner at her firm. In court, Bruner faces cool and cocky DA Ethan Thomas (Campbell Scott, ROGER DODGER), who was specifically chosen because he is a man of deep faith. Father Moore’s chief concern in the case is not his acquittal, but his chance to tell Emily’s story.

Bruner tries to punch holes in Thomas’ medical evidence and hits brickwall after brickwall. Bruner than turns her defense strategy from disproving the medical explanation to proving exorcism. This is where the film takes its most interesting turn. The film debates belief. We discover that Emily is from a very superstitious family and as possession expert Dr. Adani (Shohreh Aghdashloo, HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG) testifies she seems like an emotional hypersensitive that would be very susceptible to being possessed. So the film argues that in this case, one should look at Emily and Father Moore’s beliefs and judge whether they were negligent.

The most interesting character in the film to me was Thomas. Though a man of faith, he isn’t portrayed as a wack-job. He goes to church every week, but seems to be frustrated with the whole idea of exorcism as arcane mumbo-jumbo, which lead to a mentally and physically diseased woman to die because she didn’t get proper care. The film nicely argues both sides and leaves the “truth” open for one’s own interpretations.

The chief misstep of the film is that Bruner is an agnostic, which makes her wishy-washy to start off with. She isn’t the strongest central character. I also would have liked to see more of Emily Rose before she was possessed interacting with friends and such and less of the typical thriller moments where the film makes us wonder if the demons are really real.

Many of the critics complained that the film wasn’t scary and too talky, but I think this is wrongheaded in that they seem to have been expecting something different. This could easily be the fault of the trailer, which painted the movie out to be more like THE EXORCIST rather than the courtroom drama that it truly is meant to be. I liked the scenes of Emily Rose possession very much, because they were realistic. The film shows how medical conditions could be viewed as possession. The film didn’t convince me that possession is real, but it did convince me that Emily and Father Moore believe it is. Sometimes we might not believe what others believe, but we can believe in their good intentions.