I remember seeing the ads for this movie a couple of years ago and thinking that I just gotta watch this movie. Well, two years later, I have. The Exorcism Of Emily Rose, based on a true story about a young Catholic woman from Germany who died in 1976 after unsuccessful attempts to cure her from the alleged state of demonic possession with the means of psychotropic drugs, and who has a church approved exorcism done on her. In the movie, it’s a 19 year old American college student who is the victim. Told in flashbacks, the movie showcases the trial of the priest who is accused of causing her death & in flashbacks her ordeal. Emily smells something burning one night while asleep all alone at her dorm and checks on it. Later she contorts and falls on the floor, while feeling a great weight pushing on her. She suffers more such ‘seizures’ and sees haunting visions all around her. She is given medicine for her seizures but it has no effect. There are some disturbing contortions and seizures in front of her boyfriend, one in her room and one in church.

She decided to leave her dorm and moves back in with her parents. Her boyfriend, Jason, takes her home. Her parents call in their priest who decides to do an exorcism, as they are convinced that she is possessed by a demon. It is performed on Halloween night because Father Moore believes it might be easier to draw out the demons on that night. The priest, Emily’s boyfriend, and her father are in the room. Emily is tied to the bed. The priest uses holy water and various words from the Rituale Romanum. She speaks in tongues, including Latin, German, Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Several cats run into the room, jumping on the priest and knocking him down. Emily breaks her ties and jumps out the window, running into the barn. They follow her. Inside the barn, they are subjected to more supernatural phenomena such as unnatural gusts of wind and demonic screams and voices. The demon inside Emily refuses to name itself after repeated demands from the presiding Father but finally reveals contemptuously that there are not one but six demons. They go on to identify themselves in dramatic fashion, naming themselves one after another in dual voices from Emily. They identify themselves as the demons that possessed Cain, Nero, and Judas Iscariot and one of the Legion. Beyond that two demons name themselves directly as Belial, and “Lucifer, the devil in the flesh.”

After that Emily refused another exorcism and continued to get worse. The prosecutor contends that her speaking in tongues can be explained by her having gone through Catholic Catechism, in which she could have learned the ancient languages, and that she had studied German in high school. The priest admits that it might be possible that she could have learned these languages in school.

Nevertheless, Bruner calls the priest back to the stand the next day. He reads a letter that Emily wrote him before she died. In the letter Emily describes another vision she had, the morning after the exorcism. She walks out of the house and sees the Virgin Mary, who tells her that although the demons will not leave her, she can leave her body and end her suffering. However, the apparition goes on to say, if she returns to her body she will help to prove to the world that God and the Devil are real. She chooses to return. She concludes the letter by saying “People say that God is dead, but how can they think that if I show them the Devil?” She then receives stigmata, which the priest believes is a sign of God’s love for her, but the prosecution counters that she could have received the stigmata wounds from a barbed wire fence on her property. Father Moore is ultimately found guilty; however, on a recommendation from the jury, the judge agrees to a sentence of time served. Bruner is offered a partnership at her firm for saving Father Moore from extended jail time, but she refuses and in fact quits.

I liked the movie but I don’t believe in demons or gods and whatnot. The movie stars : Jennifer Carpenter as Emily Rose, Laura Linney as Erin Bruner, Tom Wilkinson as Father Richard Moore, Campbell Scott as Ethan Thomas & Colm Feore as Karl Gunderson (Bruner’s boss). 8 out of 10.