The Exorcist

When The Exorcist opened in December 1973, it caused the kind of mass audience reaction that has become the stuff of cinema legend. People fainted in theaters. Paramedics were called to screenings. Lines wrapped around city blocks in the dead of winter. William Friedkin’s adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel about a twelve-year-old girl possessed by a demonic entity became one of the highest-grossing films of all time and the first horror movie nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. It won two Oscars, for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound, out of ten total nominations.

Community opinion today is split along a specific line. Horror fans and film enthusiasts broadly consider it one of the most important and effective horror movies ever made. A significant contingent of modern viewers, particularly younger ones raised on faster and more visually extreme horror, find it slow, dated, or less frightening than its reputation suggests. That gap between legacy and modern experience defines most conversations about the film.

Where The Exorcist Shines

Performances anchor everything. Ellen Burstyn plays Chris MacNeil, a famous actress and single mother whose daughter begins exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior. Burstyn brings a raw, desperate energy to the role that grounds the film’s supernatural elements in genuine parental terror. Her portrayal of a woman watching her child transform into something unrecognizable earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Linda Blair, who was fourteen during filming, delivers a performance as Regan MacNeil that remains remarkable for its physical commitment and emotional range. She received a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Jason Miller’s portrayal of Father Damien Karras gives the film its emotional and thematic center. Karras is a Jesuit priest and psychiatrist experiencing a crisis of faith, haunted by guilt over his inability to care for his aging mother. His struggle to reconcile his intellectual skepticism with spiritual conviction gives the story a depth that most horror films never attempt. When the exorcism eventually arrives, it carries weight because the audience has spent time understanding what faith costs this man.

Friedkin’s direction favors slow accumulation of dread over constant shocks. The first half of the film is deliberately paced, building a detailed portrait of the MacNeil household, Karras’s personal struggles, and the medical establishment’s failure to explain what’s happening to Regan. That patience pays off when the horror elements escalate. The practical effects created by makeup artist Dick Smith remain impressive for their physicality and conviction. They feel tangible in a way that purely digital effects often struggle to achieve.

Blatty’s screenplay takes its themes seriously. Rather than using possession as a simple excuse for scares, it frames the story as a genuine confrontation between faith and doubt, science and the unexplainable. The prologue set in Iraq establishes a sense of ancient evil that extends far beyond one girl’s bedroom, and the film’s interest in theology gives it a substance that has kept people analyzing and debating it for decades.

The Exorcist’s Pacing Problem

Pacing is the most common modern complaint, and it’s hard to dismiss entirely. The film runs 122 minutes, and a significant portion of the first half is devoted to character development, medical testing sequences, and dialogue-heavy scenes that establish the world before anything overtly supernatural happens. Viewers accustomed to contemporary horror pacing, where tension escalates within the first fifteen minutes, may find this approach frustrating.

Scare factor has diminished for many modern viewers. What was deeply shocking in 1973 has been absorbed, imitated, and exceeded by decades of horror filmmaking. The specific images and sequences that caused audience members to faint and flee have been referenced and parodied so extensively that first-time viewers today sometimes encounter them as familiar rather than frightening. This isn’t a flaw in the film so much as an unavoidable consequence of its own influence, but it affects the viewing experience for people coming to it fresh.

Some viewers find the Iraq prologue disconnected from the main story, at least on first viewing. The sequence featuring Max von Sydow as Father Merrin at an archaeological dig establishes crucial thematic groundwork, but its connection to the events in Washington, D.C., isn’t immediately clear. Patience is eventually rewarded, but the opening can feel disorienting for audiences expecting a more linear setup.

A handful of the film’s shock moments, particularly some of Regan’s more extreme dialogue and behavior, land differently with audiences today. What felt transgressive and deeply disturbing in 1973 can occasionally read as excessive to modern viewers who have seen similar territory explored (and often pushed further) in subsequent horror films.

The Film That Made Horror Legitimate

Before The Exorcist, horror was largely considered a disreputable genre by the mainstream film industry. No horror film had been nominated for Best Picture, and none had commanded this kind of budget, this caliber of cast, or this level of serious attention from audiences and critics simultaneously. Friedkin and Blatty treated the material with the gravity of a prestige drama, and that approach changed what horror could be.

Its influence extends beyond the possession subgenre it effectively created. The idea that a horror film could function as serious drama, that it could explore philosophical questions while also terrifying its audience, opened doors for every elevated horror film that followed.

Should You Watch The Exorcist?

Horror fans who appreciate atmosphere and buildup over jump scares will find The Exorcist rewarding. Anyone interested in how the genre evolved should see it simply to understand the foundation that so much modern horror is built on. Viewers who connect with character-driven storytelling will find more depth here than in most horror films regardless of era.

Skip it if you need your horror fast, constant, and visually extreme from the first frame. The Exorcist demands patience and meets that patience with something disturbing on a level that goes deeper than surface-level shock, but you have to be willing to wait for it.

The Verdict on The Exorcist

The Exorcist set the template for serious horror filmmaking and more than fifty years later, nothing has fully displaced it from that position. William Friedkin built something that functions as both a deeply unsettling horror film and a thoughtful exploration of faith under pressure. Modern audiences may not find it as terrifying as the people who lined up around the block in 1973, but the craft, the performances, and the willingness to treat its subject matter with intelligence rather than exploitation continue to set it apart. It’s slower and more demanding than most horror films that followed it, and that’s a feature, not a flaw.