May 20, 2005, 7:51 a.m.
Old Dominion
An Exorcist prequel rises from the dead.

There's a pertinent bit of dialogue early in Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist: "We all must make our little deals with the devil, Merrin," says a British officer to a Catholic priest.

It's not exactly a Deep Thought. But it's a fitting commentary on the weird history of the film, which almost didn't make it to movie theaters this weekend or any other.

Last summer, Exorcist: The Beginning reached the silver screen, filled seats for a few days, and then vanished into a much-deserved oblivion. Although the opening scenes showed some promise, the whole thing devolved into a Linda-Blair-meets-Freddy-Krueger freakout, with the film's hero-priest becoming an Indiana Jones figure who has traded in his bullwhip for a crucifix.

It was certainly a big step down from The Exorcist, the legendary 1973 movie that may have had its sensational head-spinning moments but which in fact was a serious expression of orthodox Catholicism. Since then, however, The Exorcist has become one of Hollywood's cash-cow brand names — and none of the knock-offs have approached the quality of the original. (Memo to book lovers: The 1971 novel by William Peter Blatty is even better than the movie.)

Exorcist: The Beginning was actually a remake of Dominion, which was filmed first, under the direction of Paul Schrader for about $40 million. After an early screening, however, the production company decided that the Schrader version wasn't commercial enough. So it fired Schrader and hired Renny Harlin to shoot a new version using the same script as a starting point and even employing many of the same actors. This second film, which became Exorcist: The Beginning, also cost about $40 million.

Got that straight? It boils down to this: One concept, two movies, $80 million. Talk about a little deal with the devil! Film-school students probably will study this more than they should.

Now Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist is finally becoming available for public consumption — though it suffers the unenviable fate of sharing a release date with the latest Star Wars installment. In the spirit of Alien vs. Predator, maybe someone should make a movie called Darth Vader vs. Lankester Merrin. I'd probably buy a ticket for it.

But then I'm something of an Exorcist groupie. I followed the twists and turns of the Schrader vs. Harlin prequel controversy like a Vatican reporter at the papal conclave, and recently seized a chance to attend a screening of Dominion.

Thankfully, Dominion is a way better movie than Exorcist: The Beginning. That's not saying much, though. Let me be more specific: It's a solidly okay film, and if I was disappointed, perhaps it's because I was hoping for greatness and failed to see it.

The action takes place a generation before Linda Blair starts hurling pea-green soup in The Exorcist. Father Merrin is having doubts about his faith as he participates in an archaeological dig of a church that's completely buried somewhere east of Lake Turkana in Kenya. Let's just say that once he and his team open it up, Really Bad Things start to happen.

One of them, unfortunately, is the film's terrible special effects. The computer-generated hyenas look like they wouldn't make the cast of a prehistoric-beast documentary rejected by the Discovery Channel. Perhaps this is the kind of blooper that a proper post-production would have cleaned up. But it hardly matters, because there's no good reason for hyenas to appear in an Exorcist movie anyway. There does need to be a demonic figure, of course, and the one in Dominion is certainly more interesting than last summer's ridiculous rendering, but I kept thinking that it looked like a bald version of Jaye Davidson in Stargate, right down to the androgyny. Moreover, this red-eyed minion from hell wasn't especially frightening. Shouldn't a demon scare the living bejesus out of us?

The Exorcist — the original — is full of Deep Thoughts. There's an awful lot going in that film, and a lot to think about afterward: the power of faith, the nature of evil, and the question of why a benevolent God would permit the demonic possession of an innocent girl. The same can't be said for Dominion, though it does include one line I still can't get out of my head: "Sometimes I think the best view of God is from hell." If I were a theology Ph.D. student, I'd walk into my next seminar of undergrads, repeat the line, and say, "Discuss." (If memory serves, this line also found its way into Exorcist: The Beginning.) The other thing I can't get out of my head is the fact that the actor Gabriel Mann, who plays a character named Father Francis, is a dead ringer for H. P. Lovecraft.

Needless to say, Dominion isn't the second coming of The Exorcist. (Or would that be "first coming," because it's a prequel?) But if you really want to see a movie this weekend, and Star Wars is sold out, you could make a much worse deal with the devil.

— John J. Miller is national political reporter for National Review and the co-author, most recently, of Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France.