Last week’s episode of The Exorcist was a tease. It made it seem like the show was starting to gain focus and give the audience an exciting thriller, especially with the surprising reveal that Angela is Regan MacNeil. Instead, The Exorcist looks to be abandoning the possessed girl story and going for something bigger.
Much of this week focused on either looking for Casey or Angela and Chris’s personal conflict. Like any good parent-child drama, Angela felt mistreated and used by her mom as a child. In fact, the best part of the episode was a clip from an interview the two did shortly after Angela was “curedâ€. The interviewer was asking her about the event and finally asked if she thought she could ever have a normal life. The look of sheer horror on young Regan’s face when she realized her mom screwed her forever was priceless. In general, though, the mother-daughter feud is uninspiring and what we have seen of Chris makes her out to be the bad guy. It doesn’t help that she has had all of twenty minutes of screen time since she appeared last week.
Even though this week focused on two characters with potential, it’s hard to feel sorry or get invested in either one. The audience wants to see what’s going on with Casey. It is supposed to be a horror show that revolves around a possessed girl. The end of the episode, though, shows Father Marcus embracing Casey while she devours the corpse of some dead bird in Lake Michigan. He worked some of his quick magic and bam, it seemed like Casey is all good. While I doubt she is completely cured, so far her story has been extremely anticlimactic.
If she is better, what’s next? Well, the Pope is still on his way and it might be just in time. The Exorcist is turning into a battle between the city of Chicago and the paranormal world. This week met the Friars of Ascension who are essentially a group of wealthy devil worshippers who take pride in being possessed. Because The Exorcist is quickly deviating from the expected, it’s hard to know how the rest of this will play out. If there is anything the show needs, it’s some legitimate scares. I’ll give the show credit for looking good, but it hasn’t even used its great visuals in the hopes of creating an eerie environment. There was a little bit there this week when Father Marcus ventured into a crack den underneath a highway while looking for Casey, but in general, the show has settled for unoriginal jump scares.
I still look forward to this show because I’m hopeful it will start to put together an intriguing story, even if it’s just the occasional episode like last week. The Exorcist needs to develop the characters we want to see instead of adding more and thus complicating the story.
Score: 6/10
