Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist

by | Jan 15, 2015 | The Horror Review News | 0 comments

The creation and production of a prequel to one of the most successful films of all time, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, due to Morgan Creek’s desire to exploit the genre–made evident in the production company’s insistence that its original director, Paul Schrader (after John Frankenheimer voluntary surrendered the project on account of ill health though, in truth, it was due to the unwillingness of financers to insure the 70 year-old director), after having submitted a psychological thriller via historical commentary “without any of the bloody violence,” be replaced by Renny Harlin, who consented to the company’s demand for gore–posits a cinematic treat of sorts after Harlin’s version was released to dire critical and audience reception and Morgan Creek issued Schrader’s rendition a year later. As a consequence, we now have two films based on the same script using many of the same primary actors resulting in what should be an exercise in directorial influence and vision, yet little of consequence evolves as Schrader’s more thoughtful Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist merely outperforms Harlin’s Exorcist: The Beginning.

After undergoing brutal, unspeakable acts directed at himself as well as his parish during the Nazi occupation of Poland during the Second World War, Lankester Merrin (Stellan Skarsgård, a visual conglomeration of Russell Crowe and Bill Pullman) has since separated himself from his faith, becoming an archeologist in an attempt at connecting with something more tangible. He is contracted to travel to the Turkana region in Kenya and oversee a British excavation of a pristine Byzantine church dating from the 5th century, a full millennium before Christianity arrived in Africa. Once on site, he discovers that the church is concealing something beneath its floors. As he unveils what lies beneath, the Turkana tribesmen are blamed for a British soldier’s massacre and a military standoff ensues between the East Africans and the British forces, who were sent to protect their potential interests in the archeological anomaly.

William Wisher Jr. and Caleb Carr’s script–which Alexi Hawley was given to polish after Schrader’s work was announced unreleasable–does present a challenging, new historical premise: little was learned after witnessing the evil that took place during Nazi Germany’s genocidal rampage in that, only a few years afterward, one of the allied powers–Britain–approaches the indigenous peoples of East Africa in the same racist, malevolent mindset. Between the two productions, Schrader’s vision exhibits greater plot exposition in this regard but, on the same side of the coin, it can be argued that Harlin’s version inadvertently created a subtler comparison between the two armies due to his preoccupation with producting a more commercial horror effort.

This said, Dominion exhibits greater restraint and patience as Schrader patiently tells a tale, as the tension is drawn all the more taunt after the parallel between Nazi Germany and the British Army is made evident. In short, Dominion is more focused as all of its plot devices lead up to a resounding, satisfying whole unlike The Beginning, which arbitrarily develops unnecessary characters and preoccupies itself with gratuitous–and largely ineffective–moments of shock after losing what little control it had a third of the way through the production before unveiling an excessively trite and inappropriate red herring, thus dispelling the minutia of suspense it had fortuitously formulated.

Harlin also seems to be at a loss at how to direct Skarsgård as Father Merrin, who–after witnessing an unfathomable metaphysical impossibility–walks coolly to his jeep and drives off as if he were departing for another mundane day at work. I admire the actor for having to not only submit to take after take in Schrader’s film, but in his ability to look fresh and never distraught at the existential futility of playing the same character again as he utters the same lines time and time again. In respect to other character divergences between the two productions, in The Beginning we are introduced to a slew of new, albeit largely arbitrary, characters not found in the original script and the replacement of Gabriel Mann with James D’Arcy as Father Francis and Izabella Scorupco with Clara Bellar as Sarah-cum-Rachel are to little effect aside from the former character’s naïve outlook shifting to the Church’s vested interests.

Unfortunately, though Harlin’s production was granted a budget of 80 million after Schrader was only given 30 (thus abiding by the non sequitur administrative notion that if you throw enough money at something you can solve any problem), both cinematic interpretations suffer from excessively poor CGI effects in the form of animated hyenas. Though, to the latter’s credit, Schrader does offer us a few actual predators in the flesh whereas Harlin seems content to force our disbelief to be challenged throughout. On that note, Harlin–a horror veteran after making the fourth installment in the A Nightmare on Elm Street series–forgets (or blatantly ignores) the history of the genre in that he gives us possessed butterflies for a brief, fleeting moment. Indeed, in the original we spot on one wall of Regan’s bedroom a frame enclosing several of the insects. However, for any genre aficionado animating the bugs this is a no-no for it unintentionally calls forth the revitalized Lepidopteras in Dan O’Brannon’s The Return of the Living Dead. Obviously, given the weight and somber nature of the Exorcist franchise, the last thing you want to do is beckon forth images and recollections of one of the greatest zombie comedies of all time. However, on a similar note, Schrader sadly issues us a quick frame of a carnivorous bovine during Dominion’s proceedings but, like Harlin, mirrors and makes concurrent a dream motif in Friedkin’s film. Luckily, both directors decided to include one of the more potent images in The Exorcist: a pendulum which eerily ceases its undulations for no explicable reason.

The irony stands that Morgan Creek failed to recognize that the success of Friedkin’s film was due to a combination of what they sought in Harlin and denounced in Schrader: psychological drama and atmosphere as well as visceral horror. Obviously, due the box office returns, the studio’s attempt to appease the average film goer failed as many concur that Paul Schrader’s Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist is the better film. What could one expect given that Schrader’s résumé includes The Last Temptation of Christ while Harlin’s lists Cliffhanger? Though the theoretical opportunity is afforded us of a great exercise in comparative directorial influence, little is offered the burgeoning film student in this regard in that it doesn’t take a background in film theory to discover that atmosphere and pacing can create a sense of the ominous, which is to imply that neither Schrader’s film or Renny Harlin’s Exorcist: The Beginning is a great work in that the only thing that either production offers is that racism is still rampant even after the world watched the penultimate effects of genocidal hatred in the first half of the 20th century. Few would argue that the period pieces are misplaced in their release within the 21st century, but many other films breech this theory with greater success. Granted, using the genre as a metaphor for the horrors of discrimination is somewhat succinct, but considering that only a small portion of the review digressed into any in-depth analysis on this note, neither film posits much outside these limited parameters aside from accomplishing its task of lending weight to the original film, background to the character of Merrin, and–perhaps most importantly–establishes why Merrin would react so violently to the ancient statue and talisman in the original’s prologue. However, though Merrin’s faith is renewed (as it must be), neither director attempts to synchronize and justify why the opening of The Exorcist places Merrin back at a dig in Northern Iraq considering he was using the profession in order to escape the priesthood. All in all, Schrader’s film stands above Harlin’s on the sole basis of being better narrated and executed. The only facet of The Beginning which trumps its predecessor is the daunting insertion that the Byzantine church was built over the location where Lucifer fell from Grace, thus leading us to retrospectively consider what Father Karras was facing in The Exorcist. Of course, if only one plot detail can be issued to your credit, well . . .

And thus hopefully ends the Exorcist series. Few would argue that when one places the various films side-by-side, that William Friedkin’s original bests all others without hesitation. Though the franchise does boast of having made one film twice, it nonetheless exhibits trademarks not unlike other horror collectives: One excessively horrible chapter (John Boorman’s Exorcist II: The Heretic), one redeeming sequel (William Peter Blatty’s own Exorcist III), and–as is becoming more common–a prequel which lends little substantial insight nor adds much weight to any of its processors. On that note, this critic is indeed one of the chosen (though I have read others who are in the same support group) in that I openly rebuke the didactic, malicious conservativism of the original and salute the clever, engaging, witty, and challenging nature of the third installment. Aside from this cinematic heresy, yes, I’ll concur that Exorcist II is by far the worst of the series as Harlin tails Boorman’s cinematic atrocity but inadvertently achieves something of value while Schrader’s film stands as the median. Though seemingly exhausted, given the habit of Hollywood, there is always the Karras’s tale to be told or the original’s remake to anticipate . . .

-Egregious Gurnow

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