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‘The Exorcism’ Review: Russell Crowe Is Fighting Demons Again But This Time The Devil Is In The Details


A review of 'The Exorcism' in which Russell Crowe is back battling the devil but this time in the form of his own demons as a has-been actor

It has been endlessly imitated for the past half century right up to now, notably David Gordon Green’s critically reviled 2023 reboot TheExorcist: Believer which even brought original Exorcist star Ellen Burstyn back into the fold after all these decades. Miller and Fortin began writing The Exorcism in 2019, setting it cleverly as a movie, “The Georgetown Project”, within a movie about the making of a film eerily like The Exorcist in which the demons start to take over, particularly for the film’s leading man, Tony Miller (the last name no accident) played by Russell Crowe as a down-on-his-luck former action star beset with alcoholism and drug use because of his own demons after feeling guilty for abandoning his wife during her fatal illness, and their teen daughter Lee ( Ryan Simpkins). Unfortunately for the film though it also falls prey to the tropes of the genre and sails out of control in the final third thereby squandering its intriguing premise and succumbing to the suits who demand the stereotypical frights for this kind of movie.

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