The Exorcism of Emily Rose: Critic Reviews

An intelligent inquiry into the limitations of belief and faith as a defense in a court of law woo-wooed up with a heaping of religious-girl-gone-mad conniption fits.

While not especially good, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, directed by Scott Derrickson, is still a fascinating cultural document in the age of intelligent design.

The performances are topnotch.

There's no green vomit and nobody's head ever rotates a full 360; we stay in the natural world and never enter a movie world, and that makes the movie a lot better.

A perfectly sorry excuse for a horror film.

Apparently, exorcism horror movies lose a good deal of footing unless they're 'based on a true story' -- and authentication is hard to come by.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose must be the dullest exorcist movie ever made, turning instead into a dry courtroom drama.

A movie with a severe identity crisis.

Emily Rose succeeds not so much with re-branding, but through good old-fashioned star power.

[An] intriguing and perplexing movie.

Emily Rose doesn't bring any particular style or tone to its rehashing of courtroom or horror conventions. As written and directed the tale contains few wrinkles.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose is more courtroom drama than horror movie, playing like a rejected TV spinoff -- Law & Order: SSU (Special Satanic Unit).

An unusually intelligent genre item that manages to mix full-bore horror with courtroom drama.

The most frightening thing about The Exorcism of Emily Rose is how three Oscar-nominated actors were talked into working with Scott Dietrickson, writer-director of the direct-to-video Hellraiser: Inferno.

As horror, it's only mildly chilling. As anything more serious, it's half-hearted and intellectually not up to the challenge, great cast or no.

This is a horror movie, for once, which really wants us to use our heads.

[The director] has made a paint-by-numbers horror film without a shred of originality and then added onto it, like a second head, a paint-by-numbers courtroom drama without a shred of originality.

It's a pity that all this exposition is written with such clunkiness that it would make George Lucas yelp.

Aside from the occasional 'boo!' moment, the film lacks anything to stand nape hairs on end, and the trail -- which occupies a majority of the overlong 113 minute running length -- is unremarkable, despite some nice performances.

An uneasy hybrid of horror, courtroom drama and true-life story.

Director and co-writer Scott Derrickson thinks he's not ripping off the 1973 Exorcist, presumably because his effects are too tacky to work up a scare or a convincing case for possession.

Inserting a dose of horror into a standard courtroom drama, writer-director Scott Derrickson and co-writer Paul Harris Boardman have constructed a well-cast yet dopey tale that is much less than the sum of its parts.

"The film finds a way to justify its existence despite the inevitable comparisons to ["The Exorcist"], in whose shadow it will inevtiably stand..."