The Exorcist： Believer movie REACTION ｜ Michael Knowles
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
169.3181
Summary
The Exorcist is a movie about demons, but it's not about demons. It's about demons and the church. And it's about demon worship. And that's not even the worst thing about this movie, it's how it's made.
Transcript
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Before seeing Exorcist Believer, I thought that the worst movie ever made is a movie
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by Chris Marker, a French essayist film called Sans Soleil, which, when I was 12 years old,
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made me want to bash my head against a wall. It was so boring. Second to Sans Soleil is Southside
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with You, the story, it came out six, seven years ago, of Barack and Michelle Obama's love affair.
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Now just slightly below, maybe even above Southside with You, is The New Exorcist,
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one of the worst films I have ever seen in my life. The movie is not scary. The movie is not
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interesting. The movie isn't even coherent as a movie about an exorcism. Anything good about The
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Exorcist, the original movie, any and every single thing good about that movie was either taken out
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or inverted in this new movie. It started out for the first 10 seconds, pretty good, because it
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started out in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in the voodoo capital of the world, with what looked like a voodoo
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incantation around a baby. It's usually not a good sign when the voodoo witches start doing spells and
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incantations around your kids. So I thought, okay, that's right. They cast this weird spell,
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and now the demons are all around there, and we're going to find out how terrible this was, until
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the woman describes the incantation as being a beautiful blessing.
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I met this woman today at the market who gave me the most beautiful blessing of protection for Angela.
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So even now, you think, okay, well, she thinks it's a blessing of protection, but I know,
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watching The Exorcist, that that's going to cause some demon stuff. But as the movie goes on,
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you can't figure it out. Does the filmmaker know that this was weird demon stuff? Does the
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filmmaker think this actually was a blessing of protection? Does the filmmaker really know what
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this is all about? And we get the answer pretty quickly, which is that no. The first movie is a
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Christian movie. It's got all sorts of sacrilegious and blasphemous sayings, the kind of things you
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might hear in an actual exorcism. But The Exorcist is Christian. There are demons, there are Catholic
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priests, and the priests cast out the demons. The priests, standing in for the person of Christ,
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defeat the devil. In this movie, they go to pains at every single stage to say, this is not a Catholic
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thing. This is not a Christian thing. We're not. Please don't ever accuse any of us of being
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Exorcism is a ritual. Every culture, every religion, they all use different methods. It's
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I've grown up with a fascination of religions of all sorts. And this was an opportunity to
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explore possession through a variety of perspectives. Possession, oppression, pagans and
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Wiccans. We'll talk about energy attacks. A lot of focus on demons.
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Blatty, the deeply Catholic author of The Exorcist, must be rolling over in his grave.
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What this reveals from the first part is not only do the filmmakers of this new movie not understand
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the source material, The Exorcist. They don't understand the church.
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And therefore, they don't understand demons. They don't understand anything about this.
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The filmmakers here have the same attitude toward Christianity that the ancient Roman
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pagans did, that pagans always have, which is they at best will say, oh, Christianity is
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fine. You can have your God and we're going to have our gods and there are going to be a lot
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of gods that everybody can worship. Christianity does not allow for lots of other gods that people
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can worship. Christianity is an exclusive religion. Christianity says there is one God. It's the
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beginning of the creed. I believe in one God. If Christianity is true, if the priest has any
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ability to cast out the demons, then all those other false religions can't really cast out demons.
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In fact, this is the scene when the Pharisees are accusing Christ of being a bad fellow. They say,
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well, you're casting out demons by the devil. And Christ says, the devil is casting out the devil.
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Either Christianity is true and all the other religions are false, or Christianity is false.
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And the entire world that The Exorcist takes place in doesn't make any sense. Because the
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Christian view of all those pagan rituals to cast out demons is that they are, in fact, invoking demons.
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That's the only way. So they don't, from the very beginning, they don't really get it. But there's
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this tension in the movie where you say, okay, well, the Ellen Burstyn character, the mom from the
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first Exorcist movie, when she goes on and she opens up and she says, oh, it's not a Catholic thing.
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It's not a, it's whatever. You know, we can all do it. Zoroastrians and pagans, whatever.
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It's not just in one location or one religion or one culture. It's universal.
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Are they making fun of her? So in the movie, spoiler alert, some girls, a couple of girls get
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possessed by demons. And I'm skipping over like most of the plot here, because the plot is just
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terrible and boring. And I was checking my watch the whole time. Anyway, they get, they get possessed
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by some demons. And one of the dads goes up and finds Ellen Burstyn and says, hey, can you help get
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the demons out of my daughter? And Ellen Burstyn goes in to try to cast the demons out. And you
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think, oh, good grief. They made that, now the Exorcist is a woman. How woke is this thing going
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to get? And then Ellen Burstyn in one of her monologues, she says, well, I was prevented
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from doing this by the patriarchy, but I'm, I'm a minister and I can, and it's just all this
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woke feminist claptrap. But then the thing that gives you a little hope for the movie is she goes in
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and she tries to cast out the demons and it doesn't go very well for her.
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So this is probably the scariest and goriest part of the whole movie. And it's still pretty cheesy,
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but at least here you think, okay, Ellen Burstyn's character failed at doing the exorcism. So maybe
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all of this set up about how, look, man, we can all cast out demons, you know, just using the vibes
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and, you know, women can do it and priests aren't a thing and nothing really matters,
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man. We're just focused on the demons. To see ourselves in this scenario is a huge thing.
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It's going to open the story up. It's a way to bring it into the present. And that's why
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representation is so important. It's all about me. At this point, you think, oh, well, maybe that was
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all BS. And now we're going to have the priest come in and save the day. But from the beginning,
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they're starting to cast these priests as weak and feckless and confused. There's a scene in which
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a priest is convinced he should perform an exorcism, but the prelates and the higher-ups
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all around him, they say, well, I don't know if we can do this. We can't risk doing an exorcism.
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This is, again, an elementary mistake that had the filmmakers taken any time to investigate what
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exorcisms actually are or what, you know, Christianity, the faith that constitutes the
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worldview of this entire movie and cinematic universe, what they actually believe, how the
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church operates. They could have avoided making these silly mistakes. When the prelates come in,
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or whoever the higher-ups are, and they say, Father, this is very, very dangerous. It's dangerous
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for you. This is a very dangerous situation. Dangerous for you, Father. Dangerous for the
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Catholic Church. Dangerous for you to perform an exorcism? Why? Has God not conquered the devil?
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Has Christ not cast out the demons? What is it? It's not dangerous. The danger for a priest is that
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the priest might sin. That's a danger for all of us. But if you are in a state of grace, if you have
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taken on the holy mantle of God and availed yourself of the sacraments, and especially if you've
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taken holy orders and you're a holy priest, you don't have to fear the devil. No priest is going
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to go in afraid of the devil. Not with that kind of servile fear. And then they go on, they say,
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this is very dangerous for the Catholic Church. How is it dangerous for the Catholic Church? It's one
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of the Catholic Church's jobs is to perform exorcisms. What are you talking about? As though
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exorcisms are never performed. That's a misconception that a lot of people have in popular life. That's just
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not true. There are many, many exorcists all around every state, every country, every world.
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There are exorcists everywhere. The church performs exorcisms regularly. There's not a demon hiding
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under every rock, but exorcisms are required. In fact, by the way, every time you baptize a baby
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in the traditional rite of the Catholic Church, three exorcisms are performed. Exorcism is not some
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weird exotic thing that hasn't been practiced for a thousand years. So there's no risk to the church.
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It was just another way to paint the church as being weak and feckless, which is one thing if you're
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going to do it based on facts. There have been plenty of scandals in the church if you wanted to do it
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based on facts. This was just based on a complete misunderstanding. They wanted to make sure when they
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were portraying different communities of faith that they were portraying it accurately. So then we get
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into the exorcism. These people, they're going to do the exorcism anyway. And there's this woman, oh, this
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whole, this whole storyline, this woman who was going to become a nun, and then she violates her vow of
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celibacy and her call to chastity. She has sex with a man, she gets impregnated, and she has an abortion,
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which is very unlikely. It's very unlikely that if you're the sort of person who is going to become
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a nun, that you are the sort of person who is going to have sex with a man. It's unlikely. It could
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happen, but it's unlikely. And it's very, very unlikely. If you're the kind of person who takes
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life and morality so seriously that you're considering entering into religious life,
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it's very, very unlikely that you're going to kill a baby through abortion. But anyway,
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that was the setup for her character. And then this woman decides to take it upon herself
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to perform the exorcism. And that would be bad enough. But then they bring in all these other
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people. There's this witch doctor kind of woman who's filling up a bath with rose petals or
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something. This is a reminder, by the way, sometimes religious people get a bad rap for
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being superstitious. Religious people are the least superstitious people on earth.
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Because religious people, while we believe in metaphysical things and we have intuitions about
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the world that go beyond the material world, we subject them to the rigor of logic. If you don't do
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that, if you don't pursue, say, theology, which is faith-seeking understanding, you know, applying
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logic and reason to it, then you're going to end up doing weird hippie voodoo stuff like rose petals
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in a bath and blowing weird smoke out and engaging in all these superstitious rituals that pagan
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religions have done since time immemorial. That's the real superstition. So they do this,
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they've got all sorts of other people trying to perform these exorcisms, and they don't work.
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Has all this hippie set up been ironic, and it's really going to return to the roots of this movie
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and the faith and the meaning of a real exorcism? And the priest walks in. The priest says, okay,
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I don't care that I didn't get the approval of my bishop. I'm going to go in and perform this
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exorcism anyway. And it starts out pretty well.
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The priest dies, and now we got to wait for the witch doctor and all these other confused
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people to try to do something. This was the moment I think I audibly said, oh, come on,
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you know, give me a break. The first exorcist movie is about how Christ conquers the demons.
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That the power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!
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And in this, you have this explicit scene in which the demons conquer Christ,
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which just renders the movie not believable. You might not be Christian. You might not believe
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in Christianity. You might not even believe that God exists. The story presumes that God
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exists. The story is about exorcism. The story specifically is about the Christian understanding
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of exorcism. None of this makes any sense. Don't forget, we have holdover characters from
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the first exorcist movie here. This is in that universe. So you've just completely destroyed the
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entire universe of the movie and contradicted the religion that forms the basis of the movie
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and reality itself. It's a total inversion of everything. The resolution of it. How do they
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save any of the girls? They end up saving one of the girls by appealing to the girl's feelings
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for her mother. I wanted to talk to mom. The thing that helps to bring her back is this scarf
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that is from her mother. The deepest reading of this that one could have is that this is an appeal
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to ancestor spirits. One of the most basic elements of every pagan cult that has ever existed in the
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world. Ancestral possession, ancestral spirits that visit you after death. You would look to
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ancestors. You would look to spirits for guidance. The fact that some of them could be malevolent
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is extraordinarily common. An even shallower possibility, and I think one always has to
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assume the most shallow possibility in a film this incoherent, is that a physical object, really
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even devoid of spiritual import, just a thing that makes someone feel kind of good, is what brought
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her back. A story really that's about the power of love in the face of spiritual obstacles, emotional
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obstacles, all those things. Or that voodoo curse that could have started an interesting movie actually
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turns out to be a protecting prayer. Once again, totally inverting the whole point of The Exorcist.
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Making the demons the good guys, basically. Any of those reads on that resolution are pathetic
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and totally devastating to the entire narrative of the movie. And then you get, then you get maybe
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the worst part of the movie. You think that you've already, it couldn't possibly get any worse. If it got
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any worse, it would become Southside with you. Amazing story, complex, intelligent, and charming.
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This final monologue from the would-be nun turned nurse, turned not very successful exorcist minister
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What do you think evil is? I'll tell you what I think it is. That we're born in this world with hope
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and dreams and a desire to be happy. And the devil has one wish, make us give up.
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And maybe that's all God, any God, or any good person really wants from us. Just to keep going.
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Maybe that's all God. Any God. Or any good person. Or whatever you believe. I don't care.
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Give me your money, you stupid, slapping seals. I don't know. We don't know. There's no meaning
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in this film. It's just, ooh, spooky demons. Give me your money. What's it about? I don't know.
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God, or like some pagans, or your family, or I don't know, whatever.
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We pick up the story of Victor and his daughter Angela.
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But there's also demons, by the way, which I know it seems kind of weird, but...
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The film is dealing with the vulnerability of parenthood with a child that's dealing with possession.
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There's not going to be any context or explanation for how demons are real.
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Spirituality is a part of everything we do. Whether you believe or not believe,
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This is truly a movie for our times. It's a movie where people adopt the heresy of indifferentism.
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The belief that all religions are basically the same. Which we know cannot be the case because
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religions make different and, in fact, contradictory claims. But we just, when we know that,
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we all know that. We just don't want to think about it. Because that feels kind of judgy.
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You know, it's kind of like judgy and exclusive. And you got to like pick between one thing or
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another thing. I believe that's the way evil works, is to take you apart and to sow division.
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Hey man, what's evil? You know what I think evil is? I'll tell you what evil is. Evil is the
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privation of the good. There. Okay, we can move on now. Let's get into something more interesting.
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What's a more interesting story? That in the beginning was the Word,
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and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And then the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
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He saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. And there was a war in heaven, and a third of the
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angels rebelled and followed Satan down to the very pits of hell. And now the devil himself
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prowls about the world seeking the ruin of souls. That's a line from one of the prayers that was
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offhandedly mentioned in the movie before they completely undermined the prayer. And there are demons,
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demons. But there are also angels. And there's also a church on earth with power over the demons.
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And there's spiritual combat. And there's warfare. And it's specific. And it's detailed. And it's
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interesting. And you can follow the plot, at least. Or, hey, mom, scarf, rose petals, woman,
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What's more interesting to you? I think the former is a little more coherent. Something very,
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very bad occurred to me. Something not very good occurred to me, which is that I spent hours of
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my life. Precious hours that I will never get back in this fallen, temporal world, watching this