Exorcism of Emily Rose

I saw the recent movie Exorcism of Emily Rose with my dad at the Briarwood dollar theater tonight . First, the theater is awesome - movies for a dollar (and a half after 6pm) is more than bearable, it's possitively easy on the wallet. The layout of the individual showing rooms is almost identical with the old Value 4 theater but much cleaner and less populated (in general). I foresee myself enjoying many movies there in the future.

Second, the movie itself was very good - finally a movie on exorcism that can be recommended to people! The charecterizations are fair and the movie is genuinly artistic (not a cheap scare flick) and can hold up as a genuine piece of art within itself beyond whatever issues it treats (real characters, thought-provoking, bears re-watching). The movie was especially fantastic to see after just having read Athanasius's biography of Anthony of the Desert, which details Anthony's spiritual battles with demons when he was an anchorite, and makes several fascinating insights into the nature of spiritual warfare.

Now, a quick disclaimer - the movie isn't perfect. It does leave some important background details out and claims some fairly untenable assertions... but as a whole the movie is a) worth seeing and b) like any great movie, a creation that causes the viewer to begin asking the right questions and provides an objective content which can serve as a starting point for discussion of the issues it covers.

For a buck-fifty and two hours, I'm glad I did it.