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reVIEW (41)
DOMINION:
PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST
After Paul Schrader’s Exorcist prequel failed to impress studio heads, the film was shelved, and Renny Harlin was brought in to come up with a new version, Exorcist: The Beginning (see reVIEW (40) in the Archive).
But after The Beginning failed to impress audiences, Schrader’s Dominion made the festival rounds, where the critics embraced it, eventually leading to a limited theatrical release.
And after I got to see it, it was obvious that this was the better of the two prequels.
Opening in Holland in 1944, Dominion: Prequel To The Exorcist kicks off with a harrowing sequence that serves to establish why Lankester Merrin (Stellan Skaarsgard) has strayed from the faith. We then pick up years later, as Merrin (on “sabbatical”) is excavating an ancient church which seems to have been buried just as soon as it was completed.
For anyone who’s seen The Beginning, this is the same basic premise found there, though in Harlin’s version, Merrin’s wartime trauma is parceled out as a series of flashbacks running the course of the film.
In hindsight, it’s clear what the studio heads chose to do with Schrader’s Dominion: inject traditional horror elements into the narrative, a gambit that still failed in my eyes, as I point out in my review of The Beginning that it “… ends up neglecting the horror film side of itself.”
See, I honestly don’t think Schrader (and screenwriters William Wisher, Jr. and Caleb Carr; yes, that Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist) intended Dominion to be a horror film in the traditional sense. In point of fact, it isn’t even a horror film in some of the senses that The Exorcist is a horror film.
That theme of evil as external supernatural force as opposed to internal natural instinct, the juxtaposition of the horrors of the Holocaust with the evil that embraces the African village, things that I felt The Beginning could have explored but didn’t?
Well, they’re all here. Apparently, they were diluted and dispersed in the transition to The Beginning. There are some provocative themes and ideas in Dominion, and they’re delved into in a satisfying and adult manner.
Aside from what I’ve mentioned above, Dominion also underscores the manner in which an alien entity (whether a foreign military presence or foreign religion) can exacerbate a local problem. There’s also an excellent sequence towards film’s end that suggests that any large-scale public display of violence is merely the symptom of an internal struggle with evil.
Merrin’s re-conversion here is also more palpable and logical, without the heavy-handed symbolism resorted to in The Beginning.
Now, after what—if memory serves me right—is my third viewing of Dominion, what occurs to me now that didn’t years ago when I first saw it is, Why did the studio heads greenlight Dominion in the first place, only to shelve it and cobble up the Frankenstein’s Monster that was The Beginning?
It had to have been all on the page in the screenplay, didn’t it? The veritable non-existence of traditional horror film elements in the narrative, the final confrontation as philosophical and moral debate? These and other bits like it that scream, This is not a horror film the way most people define that term.
They had to have seen it as early as then, and still they went through with it, only to back-pedal and shelve the film, then to back-back-pedal and release it anyway, all the while spending more and more money.
And admittedly, Dominion isn’t as scary as The Exorcist. In the end though, neither was The Beginning.
What’s particularly damning at this point is, at least Dominion didn’t even attempt to operate on the exact same playing field as The Exorcist, which The Beginning was possibly aiming for with its botched infusion of horror movie stylings.
In the end, Schrader’s Dominion is a fascinating treatise on the nature of evil, and God and man’s positions in relation to that evil, a treatise that just happens to be set in the world of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist.
It’s also an effective back story for the character of Lankester Merrin, a disturbing snapshot of his first encounter with Pazuzu.
And ultimately, that’s what a prequel is. A back story.
Not another excuse to make some more money off a franchise that shouldn’t have been one in the first place.
(Dominion: Prequel To The Exorcist OS courtesy of impawards.com.)
DOMINION:
PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST
After Paul Schrader’s Exorcist prequel failed to impress studio heads, the film was shelved, and Renny Harlin was brought in to come up with a new version, Exorcist: The Beginning (see reVIEW (40) in the Archive).
But after The Beginning failed to impress audiences, Schrader’s Dominion made the festival rounds, where the critics embraced it, eventually leading to a limited theatrical release.
And after I got to see it, it was obvious that this was the better of the two prequels.
Opening in Holland in 1944, Dominion: Prequel To The Exorcist kicks off with a harrowing sequence that serves to establish why Lankester Merrin (Stellan Skaarsgard) has strayed from the faith. We then pick up years later, as Merrin (on “sabbatical”) is excavating an ancient church which seems to have been buried just as soon as it was completed.
For anyone who’s seen The Beginning, this is the same basic premise found there, though in Harlin’s version, Merrin’s wartime trauma is parceled out as a series of flashbacks running the course of the film.
In hindsight, it’s clear what the studio heads chose to do with Schrader’s Dominion: inject traditional horror elements into the narrative, a gambit that still failed in my eyes, as I point out in my review of The Beginning that it “… ends up neglecting the horror film side of itself.”
See, I honestly don’t think Schrader (and screenwriters William Wisher, Jr. and Caleb Carr; yes, that Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist) intended Dominion to be a horror film in the traditional sense. In point of fact, it isn’t even a horror film in some of the senses that The Exorcist is a horror film.
That theme of evil as external supernatural force as opposed to internal natural instinct, the juxtaposition of the horrors of the Holocaust with the evil that embraces the African village, things that I felt The Beginning could have explored but didn’t?
Well, they’re all here. Apparently, they were diluted and dispersed in the transition to The Beginning. There are some provocative themes and ideas in Dominion, and they’re delved into in a satisfying and adult manner.
Aside from what I’ve mentioned above, Dominion also underscores the manner in which an alien entity (whether a foreign military presence or foreign religion) can exacerbate a local problem. There’s also an excellent sequence towards film’s end that suggests that any large-scale public display of violence is merely the symptom of an internal struggle with evil.
Merrin’s re-conversion here is also more palpable and logical, without the heavy-handed symbolism resorted to in The Beginning.
Now, after what—if memory serves me right—is my third viewing of Dominion, what occurs to me now that didn’t years ago when I first saw it is, Why did the studio heads greenlight Dominion in the first place, only to shelve it and cobble up the Frankenstein’s Monster that was The Beginning?
It had to have been all on the page in the screenplay, didn’t it? The veritable non-existence of traditional horror film elements in the narrative, the final confrontation as philosophical and moral debate? These and other bits like it that scream, This is not a horror film the way most people define that term.
They had to have seen it as early as then, and still they went through with it, only to back-pedal and shelve the film, then to back-back-pedal and release it anyway, all the while spending more and more money.
And admittedly, Dominion isn’t as scary as The Exorcist. In the end though, neither was The Beginning.
What’s particularly damning at this point is, at least Dominion didn’t even attempt to operate on the exact same playing field as The Exorcist, which The Beginning was possibly aiming for with its botched infusion of horror movie stylings.
In the end, Schrader’s Dominion is a fascinating treatise on the nature of evil, and God and man’s positions in relation to that evil, a treatise that just happens to be set in the world of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist.
It’s also an effective back story for the character of Lankester Merrin, a disturbing snapshot of his first encounter with Pazuzu.
And ultimately, that’s what a prequel is. A back story.
Not another excuse to make some more money off a franchise that shouldn’t have been one in the first place.
(Dominion: Prequel To The Exorcist OS courtesy of impawards.com.)
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