The first film to truly capture the idea of a horror movie which could merge "real-life" horror (i.e. films that looked to bring frightening scenarios to a normal world in order to amplify the terror and imbue the horror with a sense of "imagine if this actually happened?") with something closer to surreal or dreamworld-like oddity, The Exorcist is a touchstone of the genre, one of the most influential, effective, ultimately terrifying films ever made. Its legend weighs heavy - effectively banned, rumours of people throwing up in the cinema etc. - but the film doesn't suffer under the burden of it. On the contrary, The Exorcist still holds up today, and while hipster cinema goers will try have it that it's not scary anymore, it truly is, not only in what it shows, but in what it implies: that a demon could possess a little girl, and that religion would allow it to.
