Editorials
Special Feature: Exorcism: An Overview Part 1
Based on the non-fiction book by Matt Baglio, the upcoming film The Rite (releasing January 28) tells the story of a disillusioned young American man (Colin O’Donoghue) who travels to the Vatican to study exorcism and finds faith through his encounters with demons. Leading up to the film’s release, Bloody-Disgusting will be putting out a series of six articles dealing with specific aspects of exorcism, a practice that has become a staple of the horror genre ever since the release of William Friedkin’s 1973 blockbuster The Exorcist. In this first installment, B-D’s Chris Eggertsen gives a general overview of the exorcism phenomenon, shedding light on the legends and stories that gave rise to the practice in the first place and highlighting the real-life case that inspired The Exorcist.
The term “exorcism” stems from the Greek word “exorkizen”, meaning “to bind by oath”, and is said to have first come to use sometime in the early second century. In Christian religions the practice stems from the New Testament of the Bible, particularly the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), in which Jesus would cast out demons from possessed people as a demonstration of his Messiahship. He also granted his apostles the same power (and, to a lesser degree, his disciples), which is why those of a higher religious authority in the Christian faith (i.e. priests) are seen as qualified to exorcise demons from the bodies of possessed people. The passages that describe exorcism in the New Testament (perhaps the most famous one has the demons inside a man declaring, “My name is legion: for we are many”) are what gave rise to the practice in the Roman Catholic Church, in addition to other sects of Christianity, and it is a tradition that carries on into the 21st century.
Perhaps the most famous early case of exorcism happened in 1633/34 with what became known as the “Loudun Possessions” (the basis of Aldous Huxley’s 1952 novel The Devils of Loudun and Ken Russell’s controversial 1971 film The Devils), in the town of Loudun, France. In 1632 several Ursuline nuns at the local convent began acting strangely, engaging in bizarre behavior such as throwing themselves on the ground, going into convulsions and shouting obscenities. The nuns then began claiming that a handsome priest by the name of Urban Grandier, who’d made many political enemies during his time at a neighboring parish, had been appearing to them in dreams and seducing them. After a series of bizarre public exorcisms in which the nuns would expose themselves and contort their bodies into overtly sexual positions, Grandier was convicted of making a pact with the Devil and burned at the stake.
Another notable case occurred in the United States over 300 years later with 14-year-old Roland Doe (known alternately as Robbie Mannheim or John Hoffman, depending on your source), who was thought to be possessed by demons following a series of strange occurrences in his Maryland home. The supposed demonic manifestations included scratching sounds on the walls, levitating household objects, and furniture moving on its own across the floor. These episodes would always occur in Roland’s presence, and the boy also began exhibiting strange behaviors such as defecating on the walls and lashing out violently at those around him. After medical and psychiatric evaluations turned up nothing, priests were called in and the boy was exorcised 30 times over a period of two months, after which the “supernatural phenomena” were said to have ceased.
While doubts remain regarding the more sensational details of the Roland Doe case, it was nevertheless what inspired author William Peter Blatty to write his 1971 novel The Exorcist, which became a massive bestseller and was later adapted into the blockbuster 1973 film. It is during this period that exorcism became a bona fide pop cultural phenomenon and entered into the lexicon of ordinary Americans of all faiths and backgrounds.
The film’s success can be partially contributed to the controversy that came to surround it, including genuine outrage expressed by many in the religious community – some of who believed that an evil force capable of causing madness had been burned into the celluloid – as well as to its shocking nature, which reportedly caused vomiting, fainting, and other horrified reactions from audience members (with some even going so far as to claim that individuals had been committed to mental institutions or killed themselves after seeing it). Needless to say, the film’s enormous success led to several rip-offs, sequels and parodies and opened the door for a wave of religious horror films that has ebbed and flowed ever since.
Be sure and check out Part 2 of our exorcism overview, where we delve into how an exorcism is actually performed and the ways in which the practice endures even into the 21st century.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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