The Real Story Behind 10 "Based On A True Story" Horror Films
7. The Exorcism Of Emily Rose
The pitch: A sort of courtroom drama-exorcism horror mash-up, this 2005 film sees Tom Wilkinson's exorcist on trial for negligent homicide after the death of Jennifer Carpenter's possibly possessed young woman. With "based on a true story" in large letters across the poster, the film promises to tell the real story of the trial that decided whether the law really believes in exorcism. The real story: Based on the court case surrounding the death of 23 year old Anneliese Michel in Bavaria in 1976, or more specifically based on Felicitas Goodman's book The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel, The Exorcism of Emily Rose unsurprisingly updates and relocates the story to modern America, but otherwise claims to be a broadly faithful rendering of the real case. Goodman, an anthropologist and expert in the phenomenon of "speaking in tongues", based her book closely on the original court records, but the film is only loosely based on these. The various priests that attempted to exorcise Anneliese are conflated in Wilkinson's Father Richard Moore, while the film does not explore the fact that Anneliese's parents were also on trial for negligent homicide (both parents and two priests were found guilty and sentenced to a six month suspended jail sentence, a controversially light sentence). Laura Linney's defence counsel is not based on any real character. Anneliese's parents were defended by Erich Schmidt-Leichner, a famous lawyer who had been part of the defence in the Nuremberg trials and argued that exorcism was perfectly legal within the German constitution, rather than the film lawyer's argument that exorcism only occurred after medicine had failed. Director Scott Derrickson (recently announced as helming Marvel's Dr. Strange) avows himself "a believer", but suggested that co-writer Paul Harris Boardman's scepticism resulted in a film that left the truth of Emily's (and Anneliese's) "possession" open to interpretation. However, it does seem to support a religious explanation more than the theory of Emily's epilepsy, while in Anneliese's case even the Catholic church have since declared her mentally ill, not possessed. Given the height of her "possessed" behaviour and all the recordings of Anneliese when "possessed" occurred after the film The Exorcist had become a hugely influential phenomenon in Germany, this may even be a case of life imitating film.
