EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING

Year: 2004
USA & UK: Warner Bros Pictures
Cast: Stellan Skarsgård, Izabella Scorupco, James D'Arcy, Remy Sweeney, Julian Wadham, Andrew French, Ralph Brown, Ben Cross, David Bradley, Alan Ford, Antonie Kamerling, Eddie Osei, Israel Aduramo, Patrick O'Kane, James Bellamy, Cecilia Amati, Matti Ristinen, Lidia Darly, James Paparella, Silvio Jimenez Hernandez, Yemi Goodman Ajibade, Michel Leroy, John Sesay, Sayoh Lahai, Alessandro Casula, Roberto Purvis, Wayne Morris
Director: Renny Harlin
Country: USA
USA & UK: 114 mins
USA Rated: R for strong violence and gore, disturbing images and rituals, and for language including some sexual dialogue
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong bloody violence and a strong sex reference
USA Release Date: 20 August 2004
UK Release Date: 29 October 2004


Synopsis

Father Lankester Merrin thinks that he has glimpsed the face of Evil. In the years following World War II, Merrin (Stellan Skarsgård) is relentlessly haunted by memories of the unspeakable brutality perpetrated against the innocent people of his parish. In the wake of all he has seen, both his faith in his fellow man and the Almighty have deserted him. He can no longer honestly call himself a man of God.

Merrin has traveled far from his native Holland in a desperate attempt to escape the horrors that he witnessed there. While drifting through Cairo, he is approached by a collector of rare antiquities to join a British archeological excavation in the remote Turkana region of Kenya. They have unearthed a Christian Byzantine church in inexplicably pristine condition - as if it had been buried on the day it was completed. The collector wants Merrin, an Oxford-educated archeologist, to find an ancient relic hidden within the church before the British discover it.

But beneath the church, something much older sleeps, waiting to be awoken. Madness descends upon the local villagers and the contingent of British soldiers sent to guard the excavation. Merrin watches helplessly as the atrocities of war are repeated against another innocent village - atrocities he had prayed never to see again. The blood of innocents flows freely on the East African plain, and the horror has only just begun.

In the place where Evil was born, Merrin will finally see its true face.

One of the most terrifying films of all time, THE EXORCIST has been the source of countless nightmares since its debut in 1973. Written by William Peter Blatty and directed by William Friedkin, the film graphically chronicles the macabre story of Regan, a 12 year-old girl who becomes demonically possessed. The only force that can release her from the demon's grasp and end her torture is a powerful exorcism, performed by Father Lankester Merrin in a ritual that almost kills them both. EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING takes audiences back in time, 25 years into Father Merrin's past, to illuminate the horrifying events that first turned him away from God, then ultimately led him down the path to becoming an exorcist.