Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005)

Directed By: Paul Schrader
Written By: William Wisher and Caleb Carr
Year of Release: 2005

At an archaeological dig in Africa, Father Merrin has his first encounter with the devil incarnate. Merrin has focused on archeology, rather than spiritual matters and is intrigued when a church buried beneath the sand is excavated. Inside, he finds many signs of devil worship. To a great extent, he has lost his faith and is particularly haunted by events of the Nazi occupation and the impact his decisions had on his parishioners. When the devil occupies the body of a young patient in the village hospital, Merrin risks his life to save him.

This film is the original version of Exorcist the Beginning before studio execs scrapped it and brought someone in to shoot a new version. I wasn’t terrified by the Exorcist, mainly because I’m not a very religious person, but there is no questioning that it’s a well done movie. When I watched Exorcist the Beginning, I didn’t really care for it. It went totally against the franchise, and tried to make it scary with gore instead of relying on imagery and music which religious thrillers should always do.

The film starts with a rather disturbing scene in which Father Merrin’s village is occupied by Nazi soldiers. One of the soldiers has been killed, and the Nazi officer tells Merrin to place the blame on someone, even though both know no one is responsible. However, Merrin refuses, and the Nazi officer takes a woman and point blank shoots her in the head. After that it just gets worse, and the film starts off with a pretty unsettling beginning.

The Nazi’s taunted his belief, and as you can imagine he lost his faith in God. The film after this really centers around Merrin regaining his faith and coming to an understanding with God as to why those events happened. He is trying to find a way of overcoming the incredible guilt he feels for letting his people die.

Stellan Skarsgård portrays Father Merrin pretty well. He seems to be a man suffering from incredible guilt, and he just did everything solid all around. In this film Merrin has an assistant named Father Francis, who was kind of on and off. In some scenes he’s great, and in others you are kind of laughing at how overly dramatic he is. Of course, that’s how most priests act, so maybe that was an intentional thing. The only knock I can give is that sometimes the actors didn’t really seem afraid of the events that were occuring.

The film is directed by Paul Schrader, who is known for his writing of films like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. The actual film looks pretty nice, and the African landscape is captured pretty well. The cinematography is done great also, because the film carries an almost depressing tone during a few scenes, which is exactly what the film needed. There is a suicide scene that is well done.

The story starts off strong and continues to build throughout the entire film. The pacing is far better than that of the previous prequel, and it slowly builds on the tension. Unfortunately, the climax is what destroys the film. The ending battle with the devil incarnate I believe took about 10 minutes, which is hardly a believable act. There was no struggle in the exorcism in at all. It was basically “I cast you out” and the devil goes “ok l8r.”

The devil was a fun character in the film, but he was introduced too late and exorcised too soon. His dialogue was nice, as he tempted Merrin with the offer to take away his past and feelings of guilt, as opposed to the boring and overused “all the riches in the world” temptation. Sadly, the character who was overtaken by the devil wasn’t really built at all, so it was hard to feel like “oh no his mortal soul is in danger save the poor boy!”

The film also suffers from incredibly bad CGI. I would assume this is due to budget restraints, but that doesn’t take away the effect of how terrible they are. The hyenas in the African desert are shown numerous times, and they look comical. The ending also features some bizarre aurora borealis thing that turns the sky into a bunch of weird rainbows and looks absolutely terrible. I have no reason why they left it in, as it really ruins the mood.

There are a few spooky moments in the film, which I thought the previous prequel lacked. The infamous “captain howdy” is back for a few scenes, but they aren’t as subtle and scary as the original. There is one cool scene where the cows become possessed and start eating flesh, which sounds funny, but it’s done well. The score seems unfinished, but it’s still a nice part of the film. It would have sounded great with an orchestra.

When it’s all said and done, it’s an interesting and at least faithful take on the franchise. True that it does lack in some parts, and the ending is pretty underwhelming, but I didn’t see a reason why this should have been scrapped. When it comes down to the prequels, this is the better film.

6.7/10