The Exorcist

Our Verdict on The Exorcist

Let's get something out of the way first: The Exorcist is not a woke movie. It is the opposite of a woke movie. It is a film that says the Catholic Church has power over evil, that priests who sacrifice themselves in faith are heroes, that a mother's love combined with institutional Christianity can defeat demonic possession, and that the secular medical establishment is completely useless against the forces of darkness. If you want a film that affirms progressive values, you will not find one here. You will find a film that takes the existence of the Devil seriously.

William Friedkin made The Exorcist in 1973 from William Peter Blatty's adaptation of his own novel, and together they created the highest-grossing R-rated film in history at that point. People fainted in theaters. People vomited. People walked out. People also came back for second viewings, brought their friends, and made the film a cultural event unlike anything before it in American horror.

The story is simple. Chris MacNeil is a Hollywood actress filming in Georgetown with her 12-year-old daughter Regan. Regan begins exhibiting bizarre behavior. Medical science runs out of answers. A psychiatrist suggests exorcism as a placebo, not because he believes in it, but because Regan believes in it. Chris approaches Father Karras, a Jesuit psychiatrist who is losing his own faith following his mother's death. What follows is the confrontation between the demon Pazuzu and two Catholic priests.

The film's theology is unambiguous. Medical science, represented by the best Georgetown University Hospital has to offer, is shown the door. Psychiatry, represented by Karras's own specialty, is irrelevant. Institutional Christianity, represented by the Church's oldest and most rigorous ritual, is what works. The doctors are shown as helpless. The priests are shown as powerful. The exorcism actually functions. That is a strong statement about the respective merits of secular modernity and institutional faith, and Friedkin delivers it without irony.

Max von Sydow's Father Merrin arrives at the Georgetown brownstone with the air of a man walking back into a fight he already survived once. He knows this demon. The Northern Iraq prologue establishes that Merrin encountered Pazuzu before, in an archaeological dig, and that encounter left marks. He climbs the steps anyway. He walks into Regan's room anyway. The image of von Sydow standing under the streetlamp, briefcase in hand, light haloing him in the dark, is one of the great images in American cinema precisely because it means something specific: an old soldier of God, answering the call one more time.

Jason Miller's Father Karras is the film's real protagonist. His arc is the one the film is tracking. Karras has intellectualized his faith to the point of losing it. He treats the body but is uncertain about the soul. His mother died alone in a state hospital and he wasn't there, and that guilt is consuming him. The demon targets this. The demon knows what Karras doubts. The possession sequences are horrifying in their specifics, but they're structured as a theological argument: the demon's entire strategy is to make Karras stop believing. He speaks in the voice of Karras's dead mother. He attacks the very things Karras loves. And Karras holds on.

The ending is the film's theological statement at full volume. Karras commands the demon to enter him, sacrificing himself as the vessel. Then he throws himself out the window, refusing to let the demon use his body, choosing death over possession. He dies at the bottom of the stairs with Father Dyer giving him last rites. He recovers his faith in the moment of his death. That is not a nihilistic ending. That is a martyrdom.

Ellen Burstyn deserves more credit than she typically receives in discussions of this film. The Exorcist is remembered for its spectacular sequences but the film's emotional engine is Burstyn's performance as a mother being destroyed alongside her daughter. She is not a passive sufferer. She fights for Regan through every medical option available before coming to the Church. When she finally accepts that this is beyond medicine, it's not weakness. It's the logical conclusion of everything else having failed.

Linda Blair was 14 when she filmed The Exorcist. What she did, and what was done to her physically in terms of the rigging, the makeup, and the demands of the role, is something that would not happen to a child actor today. The performance is shattering not despite Blair's age but because of it. The contrast between the child she clearly is and what the demon is doing through her is the source of the film's deepest horror. No amount of special effects can replicate that.

For VirtueVigil readers, this is not a complicated film to score. The Exorcist argues that evil is real, that faith defeats it, that priests who sacrifice themselves for the innocent are heroes, and that the Catholic Church's oldest rituals have genuine power. The woke-adjacent signal, Chris's single-parent household and absent father, is a narrative setup that enables the spiritual vulnerability the story requires. The film is not celebrating it. A child in a household without faith and without a father is spiritually exposed. The demon finds that exposure. The Church closes it. That is a traditional moral framework delivered in the most viscerally effective way Hollywood has ever managed.

Woke Tropes & Content Analysis

Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier

🔴 Woke Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Single-parent / absent-father household as backdrop	2	High	Low	0.7
Secular elite (Hollywood actress) forced to humble herself before religious authority	2	Low	Low	1.4
Institutional religion depicted with procedural fallibility (initial skepticism of priests)	1	Low	Low	0.7
TOTAL WOKE				2.8

🟢 Traditional Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Christian faith and the Catholic Church as the only effective counter to supernatural evil	5	High	High	6.3
Priestly sacrifice as the highest heroic act	5	High	High	6.3
Evil as objective supernatural reality	5	High	High	6.3
Maternal love as the force that will not yield	4	High	High	5.04
Faith recovered through crisis and sacrifice	4	High	Moderate	2.8
TOTAL TRADITIONAL				26.7

Score Margin: +24 TRAD

Content Breakdown

Is The Exorcist Safe for Kids?