Review of Exorcist: The Beginning

It's been quite a ride through all the Exorcist movies so far and Exorcist: The Beginning is just another one of those showing the audience a make believe of events that supposedly happened before the first film. This concept never really worked for me because in general the film makers just make up inconsequent stories out of thin air and try to ride on the success of a name which earned its credibility for being unique and shocking for the time period it got released. In this movie events take us to Africa to a church that was discovered buried under sand and all this decades before Christianity even took place in that region. After they dig it out strange things start to happen and of course it is a clash with the superstitions of the local inhabitants. As I said, thin air. The first half of the movie seems to drag endlessly even though the acting is okay. Continuous flashbacks really begin to test the patience of the audience until finally the big showdown is in sight. Here we do get some good visuals on the now possessed Sarah, the main female protagonist who works as a doctor in the area. But since all attempts of curing anything fail, she is otherwise quite useless to the plot other than being a possible trophy for the horny men close by or, well, as a vessel to put the demon into so the appearance can be somewhat similar to the original movie. I enjoyed the visuals maybe just because of these similarities and the overall atmoshphere was acceptable, but for most of the movie's duration I was incredibly bored. Everytime tension was buit up basically nothing happened and at the end you have been through so much of this, that you don't even bother in letting the tension within you build up anymore. Simply by assuming you will end up being fooled again anyway. This movie had a lot of potential, but with all the generic Hollywood 101 most of that fades into, yes exactly, thin air.