If he’s not careful, Academy Award-winning actor Russell Crowe (Gladiator) is going to get typecast late in his career. Last year, he was in The Pope’s Exorcist, and now, he’s in The Exorcism.
The Exorcism stars Crowe as Anthony Miller, a washed-up, alcoholic actor who lands a role in a horror film when the original actor mysteriously dies. The movie is called The Georgetown Project, and it’s a remake of…a legendary film whose title The Exorcism dances around but never says outright.
Anyway, Tony’s estranged daughter, Lee (Ryan Simpkins from the Fear Street movies), has been kicked out of college, so he lands her a job on set as a production assistant. While getting into character, Tony winds up struggling with his sanity, leaving Lee to wonder if he is falling back into his old addictions…or if there is something more sinister going on within the project.
So, it’s clear that the movie that the crew is remaking in The Exorcism, The Georgetown Project, is The Exorcist. There’s a fun little connection there, as director Joshua John Miller, aside from being a screenwriter (The Final Girls) and a child star (Near Dark, River’s Edge), is also the son of Jason Miller, who played Father Karras in The Exorcist. Small world.
The screenplay for The Exorcism, which was written by Miller along with his writing partner M.A. Fortin (who also co-wrote The Final Girls), has a lot of potential. It’s a clever concept – a cursed film set that is producing a remake of an already supposedly cursed film.
That’s pretty much where the cleverness ends. Rather than keep things mysterious and have the crew deal with unexplained accidents and tragedies, The Exorcism embraces the possession angle, which turns it into a predictable, heavy-handed slog. At one point, when Tony is approached, he literally says “My name is not Tony!” Yeah, The Exorcism is that kind of possession movie.
To its credit, The Exorcism does deal with important themes like addiction, mental health, and grief. It’s an admirable attempt, but the execution is ham-fisted. Just the fact that those around him assume that Tony’s erratic behavior is from a relapse instead of another, more serious reason is, while justified, very stereotypical. And when Tony is faced with temptation, it’s even more silly – as he’s about to crack open a bottle, he finds a crucifix under a copy of the movie’s script. Divine intervention? Nah, just an attempt at dramatic imagery.
Even the segments that are effectively constructed seem as if they are lifted out of other movies. In one scene, the possessed Tony bangs his head repeatedly against a table. In another, a character is attacked through a mirror. Miller shows his competence as a filmmaker in these moments, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been seen before. Sure, the whole thing is a low-key homage to The Exorcist, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a little original while it does it. But it’s not.
The biggest difference between Russell Crowe’s The Pope’s Exorcist and The Exorcism is in how the former knew exactly what kind of movie it was and leaned into it. Crowe in The Pope’s Exorcist was fully aware that he was making a glamorized B-movie and looked as if he was having as much fun while making it as the audience was having while watching it. The Exorcism takes itself way too seriously, and therefore, so does Crowe in it.
Tackling a movie that attempts to outdo The Exorcist, even one that does so through the guise of making a movie within the movie, is brave. In this respect, Joshua John Miller and Russell Crowe should be commended. But it’s not unreasonable to expect that movie to be better than The Exorcism. Or at least scarier.
GRADE: C-
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour 33 minutes
Release Date: June 21, 2024
Distributor: Vertical
This post was last modified on November 6, 2025 5:14 pm