Remember how The Exorcist hinted at Father Merrins backstory but didnt show it? It was as though William Peter Blattys Oscar-winning script was inviting the audience to fill in the blanks. Blatty had nothing to do with The Beginning, so Renny Harlin retools the padre as a drinking mans Indiana Jones and sends him on a hunt for a mythical artefact, bringing him into contact with lots of bad CGI. Desperate to build a story, the filmmakers throw in every hoary cliché they can think of, from multiple it-was-only-a-dream sequences to that old standby, the heroine investigating a power cut while wearing a towel. Most perplexing of all (no mean feat) is the scene where the Stuffy English Major, whos just witnessed his butterfly collection come to life, attempts to halt the hallucination by.placing a gun to his head. It ends with the most protracted, over-the-top, unintentionally hilarious exorcism since, well, The Exorcist III (1990). When a possessed hottie starts dry-humping Merrin, he whispers The power of Christ compels you in her ear, causing her to scurry away before flying towards him like the Warner Brothers logo in the old Looney Tunes cartoons. He defeats her easily enough, because as everyone knows, there aint no ass-kicker like a man of faith.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
