The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Posted on 17. Jul, 2008 by Jamie Shuhyta in 1080p, 2.40:1, AVC MPEG-4, Dolby Digital 5.1 (Spanish), Dolby Digital 5.1 (Thai), Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (English), Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (French), Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (Portuguese), Horror, Reviews, Sony Pictures, Unrated Edition

I’ve made it known in the past that I’m a huge fan of horror movies. I love the feeling you get when you’re scared, the adrenaline rush to the senses that just grasps you throughout your cinematic experience. To date there have been very few horror movies that focus on the theory of human possession and exorcisms, today I will review one such film. Of course there is the one and only pinnacle of horror movies that deal with these subjects, The Exorcist, but unfortunately to my disappointment it hasn’t been put on the Blu yet. Instead today we look at a film that kinda mirrors the ideas present in The Exorcist, but twists the story to focus more on the legal aspects of exorcisms. It’s an interesting concept and ideally an attempt at something new, something we really haven’t seen on film to date. The question is does it work, or will people just reject it as another attempt to dethrone the legendary The Exorcist. Today I will review The Exorcism of Emily Rose on Blu-ray.

The story is said to be based on true events, whether or not that’s true I don’t know, but it does add to the mystery if it is indeed. The story focuses on a nineteen year old Catholic college girl named Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter). Emily dies a couple of days after being submitted to an exorcism carried out by her parish priest, Father Moore (Tom Wilkinson). Emily believed she was possessed by six demons, and although authorized by Emily and he parents, Father Moore is accused of negligent homicide, since he had suggested Emily to interrupt the use of medications for epilepsy. In order to avoid a scandal, the Archdiocese hires the successful, ambitious and agnostic lawyer Erin Bruner (Laura Linney), and the prosecution assigns the religious prosecutor Ethan Thomas (Campbell Scott). Along the days, there is a vicious court battle between science and religion. The story is told via flashbacks, all court scenes take place in real-time, and the possessions and exorcises as events already unfolded.

I don’t know, a lot of people really like this movie, but for me it just doesn’t really blow me away. I realize it’s my opinion here and honestly you may love this film, but in the end I was super disappointed when I saw it back in 2005. Maybe it was a misunderstanding going into watching it, I was lead to believe by the trailers that it was going to be a real nail-biter of a horror, but it wasn’t. Instead what you get are a few scenes, maybe 30 minutes, of horror type material mixed into a TV court drama like Law and Order. When the movie does feature scenes of terror and possession it’s really well done, not cheesy like many horrors tend to be. But to me I guess it just wasn’t enough, I want to be thrilled and scared continuously, not given 2 minutes of great stuff and then be back in the courtroom for 20. The movie does have a few great scenes which are super scary and tend to induce the favorite ‘jump’ reaction among its audiences. If you like horror/suspense movies you may want to give it a go if you haven’t seen it yet, but just don’t expect it to scare you stupid.

Video

Emily Rose is presented in Blu-ray standard of 1080p/24, MPEG-4 (AVC), featuring an aspect ratio of 2.40:1. Picture quality is really good, and strong throughout the film. Colors are excellent and super clean, a lot of the scenes focus front and center on people’s faces and the skin tone color was vivid and really life like. Something else I noticed that was extremely pleasant and refreshing was the control of blacks throughout the film. Lately a lot of the Blu’s I’ve reviewed have had really weak night and dark scenes, often suffering from black crush and lose of detail, Emily Rose doesn’t seem to suffer from this. Detail, contrast and sharpness are also very good, this is the way Blu-ray transfers should be. I really have no complaints about this disc’s video transfer.

Audio

There is a plethora of audio tracks on The Exorcism of Emily Rose and again like the Blu-ray edition of Urban Legend, a few odd ones. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix comes in the forms of English, French and Portuguese, if you do Spanish or Thai, its Dolby Digital 5.1 for you. Audio is also very strong and constant throughout the transfer. It’s often very dynamic and ultra pronounced; some scenes with rain and thunder are simply amazing, it will definitely pound your sub and press your tweeters. Sound is always clean and very life like, one scene features a glass that falls and breaks, no word of a lie it sounds like it happened right beside you. Sound detail therefore is also excellent, as you hear every creak and crackle, obviously important in a scary movie. Since a lot of the film features courtroom dialog its key the soundtrack expresses that, which it does, voices are robust and apparent, never over shadowed by the surroundings. I do wish more Blu’s gave this quality of sound.

Special Features

Special features are unfortunately weak, as they are no different than the ones released with the 2005 DVD. Also all specials are in standard definition, another minus, by now special features should be at least partially in Hi-def. The back of the case does say BD-LIVE, but like Urban Legend on Blu I don’t see any interactive 2.0 material or menus. This is what you get….

“Director’s Commentary” - Not bad, features Writer/Director Scott Derrickson talking about his project and the work that went into creating this tale.

“Genesis of the Story” - A really interesting featurette that offered some attractive information on the story and production, definitely my favorite pick on the disc.

“Casting the Movie” - Another featurette, this time focusing on the cast choices.

“Visual Design” - A look at establishing the appearance and feel for the film.

“Deleted Scenes” - A few extra scenes that were cut, but nothing that really adds to the film.

Final Thoughts

So I don’t know, if you’re a fan you’ll want it on Blu, if you’ve never seen it you might want it to. If you already own the DVD or aren’t really into this attempt to combine horror and courtroom drama into one you might want to skip it. Despite your choice of opinion on the film, you can’t really argue the transfers. Both video and audio are really really good, there pretty darn close to demo in my opinion. Special features are meh, nothing new, nothing Hi-Def and maybe you can figure why they keep putting in huge letters “BD-Live Enabled” on the back of cases, but nothing on the disc?