The Devil and Father Amorth Reviews

A fascinating documentary from William Friedkin, the man that brought William Peter Blatty's classic "The Exorcist" to the big screen, "The Devil and Father Amorth" chronicles a real life exorcism at the direction of the former chief exorcist of the Vatican, Gabriele Amorth. Allowed into the exorcist's chamber with a single camera and no crew, Friedkin comes face to face with the phenomena that cemented his name in film history.

Stripped of any Hollywood polish, Friedkin shows us why Blatty's novel (and thus his film adaptation) is one of the most culturally relevant pieces of cinema ever. Experts and clergymen all do their best to take a hold of the jarring evidence before them and come up with strikingly similar conclusions just as their fictional counterparts did when they handled Regan McNeil's fictional case in "The Exorcist". In turn, we are left to embody one of the three major faith paths presented in the novel and book. Are we the agnostic, faced with something that begs explanation beyond the realm of science? Are we the doubter, stunned back into a primal state of belief? Or are we the believer, reaffirmed in our faith?

The film even dares to question the folly of its own existence by including the warnings of renown author and historian Jeffrey Burton Russel and the final words of the possessed in question. What those conclusions are will chill you to the bone in light of what you've just witnessed.