Don't listen to the negative reviews

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It's been quite a ride through all the Exorcist movies so far and Exorcist: The Beginning is just another one of those showing the audience a make believe of events that supposedly happened before the first film. This concept never really worked for me because in general the film makers just make up inconsequent stories out of thin air and try to ride on the success of a name which earned its credibility for being unique and shocking for the time period it got released. In this movie events take us to Africa to a church that was discovered buried under sand and all this decades before Christianity even took place in that region. After they dig it out strange things start to happen and of course it is a clash with the superstitions of the local inhabitants. As I said, thin air. The first half of the movie seems to drag endlessly even though the acting is okay. Continuous flashbacks really begin to test the patience of the audience until finally the big showdown is in sight. Here we do get some good visuals on the now possessed Sarah, the main female protagonist who works as a doctor in the area. But since all attempts of curing anything fail, she is otherwise quite useless to the plot other than being a possible trophy for the horny men close by or, well, as a vessel to put the demon into so the appearance can be somewhat similar to the original movie. I enjoyed the visuals maybe just because of these similarities and the overall atmoshphere was acceptable, but for most of the movie's duration I was incredibly bored. Everytime tension was buit up basically nothing happened and at the end you have been through so much of this, that you don't even bother in letting the tension within you build up anymore. Simply by assuming you will end up being fooled again anyway. This movie had a lot of potential, but with all the generic Hollywood 101 most of that fades into, yes exactly, thin air.

Don't get me wrong. The first 3 Exorcist movies are very scary. But this prequel is scarier. Dominion a prequel to the exorcist is scarier. But still this is a very scary movie. This is one of the scariest movies mad before 2005. See this movie. It is a great movie. It has great acting. It also has a great story line. It also has great special effects. All the exorcist movies are must sees. They are some of the best horror movies ever made. An old church is dug up in Africa. No one knows it's origins. And archaeologist who is a former priest is sent there. It turns out there was a demon buried with the church. Now that he as been woken up he has possessed some one. Very scary. See it.

This prequel to the classic terror tale of "The Exorcist" was directed from scratch by Renny Harlin; originally Paul Schrader had done a version (which is its own separate film) that was scrapped by the studio. It shows us the earlier days of the tormented Lancaster Merrin (Stellan Skarsgard). Haunted by something that he was forced to do during WWII, he now works as an archaeologist. He's hired to work on a dig in East Africa, where a church has been found buried under the sand. This place, of course, is shrouded in evil. A child is harmed, workmen go mad, and there are special effects galore.This could and should have been a more powerful story about one mans' rediscovery of his faith. Unfortunately, it just doesn't have that much impact. There's spooky atmosphere to spare; the filmmaking is at least commendable on a technical level, with very stylish lighting by Vittorio Storaro. The story is treated with the utmost seriousness, with very little in the way of humour. There are passable shocks, but nothing that's all that eerie, and certainly nothing that's really memorable. The CGI is pretty damn unconvincing at times. After a while, it all starts to feel pretty familiar, not just to followers of this franchise, but to followers of religious horror in general. We never get to really know most of the characters - only Father Merrin is fleshed out to any substantial degree.Thankfully, Merrin is a compelling character, and Skarsgard is extremely well cast. He and his supporting actors do their able best with what they've got. Izabella Scorupco plays a dedicated doctor, James D'Arcy the helpful Father Francis. Alan Ford chews up the scenery as Jefferies. Child actor Remy Sweeney is appealing as the imperiled Joseph.Naturally this effort is going to fall short when compared to the iconic 1973 original, but it isn't altogether bad, and one could certainly do much worse than this.Six out of 10.

Judging by the average rating of 5 here at the IMDb, it seems that this prequel was not very well received. I can understand that some might be angry at the idea of another exorcist feature coming along so many years after the original, but I like to think that a prequel is the best kind of sequel. I feel that it stays true to the tale of the original 'The Exorcist' very well, more so than say 'The Exorcist II: The Heretic' did. Those are all films that I need to revisit as well, though. Stellan Skarsgard is an underrated actor, and I feel that he was a great choice for Father Merrin. It's nice to see Isabella Scorupco in a different role than we usually see her in as well.Director Renny Harlin does a good job at setting the atmosphere and the tension nicely. Better than you would expect the director of 'Deep Blue Sea' to handle such a heavy subject. The film does follow a more conventional storyline than the first films did, and I will admit that maybe it could come off as somewhat predictable to some viewers. I thought it was very well done though, the tension rises tremendously throughout the first half of the film. It gives way to the sort of feeling that 'The Reaping' would build off of a few years later. The art direction is very nice, the sets are all beautiful, the makeup and effects are mostly decent with very few exceptions where the computer generated special effects were slightly cheesy. The film was creepy and suspenseful, and it seems to me a very enjoyable yet underrated film.EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING -----7/10.