If you're expecting a horror movie in the vein of the original Exorcist movie you're not going to get it as director/co-writer Scott Derrickson decides to stage the entire movie as more of a courtroom drama than outright horror flick. Which is quite refreshing to such a long-time horror fan as myself, despite the fact you have to take Sony to task for trying to advertise this as a straight-ahead fright flick.

Loosely based on the true story of Anneliese Michel (click here for more), Derrickson does take a lot of exceptions regarding the events to tell the tale of Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter), a nineteen-year-old young woman who starts to suffer from all sorts of visions and supposed spiritual visits when she goes away to college. Seems that at 3 a.m. each morning (which is, according to the script, the "witching hour"), Emily is visited by demonic spirits who are trying to take over her body.

Returning home to her parents, and suffering from these visions and nightmares more and more frequently, it gets to the point where the family decides to call in a local priest (Tom Wilkinson) to perform an exorcism on their daughter. But things don't go exactly as planned and we learn, in flashback (as most of the exorcism and events leading up to the story are), that Emily ends-up dying due to her symptoms.

The main story arch of The Exorcism Of Emily Rose follows priest Wilkinson's trial following the death of Emily on charges of manslaughter. It focuses mostly on scenes of the two opposing lawyers (Laura Linney and Campbell Scott) trying to uncover the truth behind the events and bring closure to Emily's family. Linney starts delving into the story and begins to believe her client while Scott is trying to prove that Emily may have been suffering from a combination of both epilepsy and schizophrenia. How Derrickson gets us there is an effective blend of court drama, religious speculation, and some well-shot scenes of horror. The film raises many questions while at the same time keeping enough vague to give its audience the opportunity to discuss the film with one another after they've viewed it.

Another reason The Exorcism Of Emily Rose worked well for me is the fact that Derrickson also manages to keep it rooted within reality while also pulling off some somewhat creepy scenes of Emily seeing demons (like a moment where she sees a classmate's eyes melt) and giving his exorcism scenes a chaotic, and extremely effective, style.

This is one provocative, strongly acted drama-horror that doesn't attempt to hammer any sort of religious message into you and lets you make your own conclusions, plus it's combination of genres just plain worked for me and made it a nice change from the usual "demonic possession" movies out there. It's because of these reasons I'm naming The Exorcism Of Emily Rose as one of my favourite horror movies of 2005 and it marks quite a jump for Derrickson going from making the fifth (admittedly half decent) Hellraiser movie to this.

Review based on unrated version - though there's really nothing here to earn it the tag of "unrated". (Chris Hartley, 1/17/06)

Directed By: Scott Derrickson.
Written By: Paul Harris Boardman, Scott Derrickson.

Starring: Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson, Campbell Scott, Jennifer Carpenter.