Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist.

Review #2466: Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist.

Cast: 

Stellan Skarsgård (Father Lankester Merrin), Gabriel Mann (Father Francis), Clara Bellar (Rachel Lesno), Billy Crawford (Cheche), Ralph Brown (Sergeant Major), Israel Aduramo (Jomo), Andrew French (Chuma), Antonie Kamerling (Kessel), Julian Wadham (Major Granville), Eddie Osei (Emekwi), with Rick Warden (Corporal Williams), and Mary Beth Hurt (Pazuzu) Directed by Paul Schrader (#2290 - Cat People [1982])

Review: 

"I’m happy with the film. I realize its limitations. I realize that I made a film with a problematic commercial premise. Now, it may be a quality film, but there was no way this film was gonna go out and break box office records. Not gonna happen. Now the truth is, if they had tarted up my movie, cut it with some gore, done a misleading ad campaign, not shown it to critics, did a huge television [campaign], which is what they did for Renny’s film, they probably could have made somewhere in the same vicinity of money...But, I’m much happier having the film that I made exist in the form that I made it in rather than some tarted-up version I’d have to disown."

Exorcist: The Beginning was such a flop that Paul Schrader actually saw the film on opening weekend with William Peter Blatty and stated, "This is really bad. If it stays this bad, I bet there's a chance I can get mine resurrected." While Warner Bros. planned to give Schrader's film a direct-to-video release, Morgan Creek "generously" let Schrader do a limited theatrical release of his version, specifically a small amount of time and money to refine things (examples include that most of the music is recycled from the Harlin film and a lack of time to do ADR and color timing work). Tim Silano was approached to edit the movie but he insisted that Schrader be around to oversee it. Schrader, in seeing the nature of the Harlin film, went for "a little more leisurely" edit rather than the staccato cut he had done prior (the final movie was 116 minutes, which happened to be two minutes longer than The Beginning). Caleb Carr (who once called Schrader's original cut "one of the most inept, amateur, utterly flat excuses for a film that has ever been concocted") and William Wisher Jr were the only writers given credit for the screenplay. With a limited release in a few theaters (the same weekend as Revenge of the Sith) the movie was at least seen by people the way it should have been: not on the direct-to-video bargain bin; Schrader later called the experience as one he shouldn't have done, complete with saying he "got suckered". The Exorcist was not done being pillaged for new material, as a television series came and went in the 2010s before a new film came out with David Gordon Green's The Exorcist: Believer (2023), a movie that, you guessed it, paled in comparison to the original. 

It may interest you to know that Schrader once called The Exorcist "the greatest metaphor in cinema - God and the Devil in the same room arguing over the body of a little girl." The two Exorcist prequels basically run from the same start and end points with diverging ways to get there: a priest with a crisis of faith (1947/1949) encounters something in the midst of his time in Derati (British Kenya) that challenges who he is before he regains his faith. You could say that Blatty had a point in calling this film a "handsome, classy, elegant piece of work" while also noting that it can only go so far in trying to live up to its namesake. Both movies show Merrin have his faith shaken after being terrorized by a Nazi that has him choose people to die rather than see a whole group get taken out but this one starts with it rather than show it in parts as before. But here he is now an archaeologist that happens to find a buried church in Kenya, complete with having the exorcism target be a youth who goes from crippled to far more walkable by the time the effects (not quite finished, but hey) show up for a movie that at least tried to take evil seriously (before the loin cloth, anyway, that is when I start to chuckle). It is curious to see Skarsgård again hold up an Exorcist movie with the best performance, mainly because there is something to ponder in seeing one try to pick up the pieces of their faith with conviction that does at least make you believe he would be ready for what could happen next in say, The Exorcist. I guess you could say Mann provides the one supporting presence in either of these movies that is worth a glance, even if his role is mostly a whimpering one in the eyes of guilt (both movies end the same way for him anyway).You could say that the depiction of the military intruding upon the natives imitating what Merrin saw in the war is a curious one, but even then, it feels a bit polite when one is talking about evil (Merrin isn't exactly much better, at one point he wants people to work really really hard to dig out that church). I really wanted to like the movie, but there is a hollow feeling I get when watching the movie, it just doesn't feel nearly as tense or as interesting as it wishes to be in "angst". Schrader just seemed more interested in personal angst with Cat People and it also just seemed like a more well-rounded film. As a whole, Dominion holds up better as an overall movie than The Beginning, but neither movie really moves the needle on belonging as an actual prequel to The Exorcist. In their travels from finding faith through an exorcism, Dominion is mild in execution and altogether not as curious as it really feels like it should be, but it at least is entertainment when compared to the slop of Beginning. Pick your poison, I suppose.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.