MovieChat Forums > Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005) Discussion > The good, the bad and the ugly.

The good, the bad and the ugly.

posted 8 years ago by Undutchable1939
3 replies | jump to latest

Just like ALL films in the Exorcist saga, they all suffer from being linked to the original.
The first one is a classic, amazing brilliant.
So you expectations for films with the same title are high.
Yet they all disappoint.
If this film had no relation to that first film, it would have just been another average film.
No masterpiece, but also not horribly bad.
But because I expected more, it became worse.

Good things; I loved the main actor, Stellan Skarsgård, he is great.
And I also liked the backstory, this priest living with this horrible wartime thing he was part of and how it came back to haunt him.
Of all the things satan could offer you to seduce you, a chance to redo the worst moment of your life and fix it might be one of the most tempting.
And then realising it would have made things worse...

The historical atmosphere is pretty decent, good costumes, hairstyles, etc.
It feels like the 1940s.
Although the German SS commander's uniform isn't quite right.

Anyway, everything else is a big pile of meh.
Defeating Satan himself, or whoever diaper boy is supposed to be, seems like less of an effort to kick that demon out of a little girl in the first film.

I liked this version more than the other one, because of the extra attention given to the WW2 background story but with the other one the grand finale was a bit more exciting.
So maybe combining both bad movies could still make it a little interesting.
But it will still be a bit of a mess.

[–] bastasch8647 8 years ago

(You posted the same post twice)

Both prequels have their problems. Dominion is slow and quiet and maybe a bit too reflective for its own good. Beginning is fast, unreflective, and too much a monster movie to hold that authentic Exorcist "feel". Both suffer from substandard sfx. On the whole, I prefer Dominion because of the two, it seems more thought out and "mature". And it has two good Blatty-style lines - the one where Bellar tells Skarsgard, "Sometimes I think the best view of God is from hell", and where Gabriel Mann tells him/Merrin not to condemn others for a faith/hope that he himself once held - which sort of taps into the theme of Merrin's sin of pride elaborated in Blatty's novel and hinted at in the Friedkin film. Nice stuff like that, which got buried in a kind of cinematic mud flow...

[–] Undutchable1939 8 years ago

Thanks for the heads-up, I removed the other post.

And I agree with your comment.

[–] bastasch8647 8 years ago

You're welcome. I enjoyed reading your post, too.