Like many people in their twenties and thirties, my first exposure to The Exorcist was stumbling across its broadcast on TV at age 9 (bad parents!) and being too scared to move away from the screen until a commercial broke the spell. Since then I'd kept my distance from subsequent showings as a TV movie or on video, since it was already hard enough at that age to sleep after witnessing the menace of the Wicked Witch of the West on The Wizard of Oz. Decades later, it still made no sense to me: how could seeing such a film constitute entertainment?

It's just a movie, say some, and being scared by one provides particular thrills worth paying for. But The Exorcist's themes are still serious enough to evoke substantial dread in others, and the sense of threat from malevolent spirits can be psychologically poisonous, such that one no longer feels safe at home without the lights on. The Exorcist easily tops many lists of the scariest movies of all time, and one wonders if that is a distinction to be proud of. Does horror in art serve a constructive purpose? Is horror a subject the cinema should explore? Or can the power of sound and images be too effective in some horror films that they can only cause harm?

First, a distinction should be made. What most people these days equate with the horror genre are, more accurately, slasher films. This involves confronting you with the notion of someone or thing pursuing you in the dark and carrying some sort of sharp instrument, with the intention of applying said instrument to your person and prematurely ending your life in some messy and invasive manner. From Friday the 13th to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Scream and their endless sequels, this is a 1980's concoction that has only limited similarities to horror films. Think of what it is you're afraid of in The Exorcist - not of physical harm per se, but simply having to face what's in that bedroom. (This would have been a vastly different, and less important, film had the possessed Regan decided to loose her bonds and walk around the neighborhood thinning the herd.)

The sensation of horror is not simply the fear of physical harm, but the fear of confronting something you're not willing to welcome into your realm of experience. It involves a radical and forced re-ordering of your understanding of the world, an abandonment of the rules you previously believed your world to work by. It's an intrusion on a scale your powers of denial are incapable of ignoring. It's lacking the skills to face a paradigm shift, as your dreams of security and happiness are irrevocably marred. And in the end, it's realizing that you may not have the luxury of dying to escape this predicament.

Need examples? Watching a parent or grandparent be erased by Alzheimer's. Waking up to discover a car accident removed you of the ability to move ever again. Finding your child sexually abused by a stranger. Discovering your spouse has been unfaithful for the past thirty years. These are some of the more prosaic examples of how we experience horror, but motion pictures have come up with visually more inventive ways: try the reproductive cycles of the creatures in Aliens, the factual deformities of the Elephant Man, the possibility of mental deterioration in Jacob's Ladder, your life being toyed with by a sociopath in Seven, all where life as you imagined it should be is no longer how it is at all. And this is the cinema's rightful domain by asking, "how do you deal with the horrific?", because it does indeed happen. Slasher films cheapen the genre by identifying the viewer instead with the killer and facilitating your enjoyment of all the bloodshed. Horror is about delivering to you misfortune that is distinctly unwanted.

Now we find that The Exorcist, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of its initial screening, has been re-released in theaters, and this time with remastered stereo sound and extra footage. Is this an event I welcomed? Not exactly, but I was twenty-one years older, and had long since tried to live my life by the adage, what you're afraid of doing the most, you need to do the most. Here seemed an excellent opportunity to apply my philosophy. Indeed, what was needed was an exorcism of my own, to get the fear of the film out of my system, to confront that which had held power over me for so long and placed limits on what I felt capable of experiencing. It was time to see if I was equal to the task of facing what I had long regarded as horrific.

It should be understood first that this film is not about whether a preadolescent girl is legitimately possessed by a demon, or by Satan himself, or by her own psychological hangups. It's not about whether young Regan's body can be freed of its otherworldly guest by Catholic intercessors. The Exorcist is not about its title character, whom we infer to be Max vonSydow's Father Merrin, standing by the lightpost in front of the house in all the movie posters. The film is not even about the fight for Regan's soul. This is, it turns out, the tale of a disillusioned priest's struggle with his own disbelief in the forces of good and evil.

We initially find Father Karras (Jason Miller) acting largely as a psychiatric counselor in his parish, due largely to all the degrees the Church sent him to acquire and his inability to cope with his elderly mother's tragic deterioration and isolation. He has, for too long, relied upon a psychiatric basis in addressing his congregants' concerns, and cannot find a loving God amidst his own guilt and helplessness. The demonic agent that slowly infiltrates itself into the movie in fact has its sights set on Father Karras, seeing him as a soul ripe for stealing away from a faith-based relationship with God. This becomes clear during a nightmare Karras sees one night, where a vision of his now-deceased mother laments his inaction toward her institutionalization and subsequent death, and the demon's own grinning face appears almost subliminally amidst the images. Why would the demon make such an appearance if his only target was the little girl across town? (It should be noted that the demon's face, lasting only a second or two, constitutes the film's single most terrifying scene, all the more affecting for its brevity, for the afterimage lingers in our visual memory long after the film ends, flashing in our sights even at home days afterward. Such is the force of suggestion that director William Friedkin understood can be an effective source of terror, much more than the gore that follows.)

All that transpired at the home of actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) is simply a means to lure Karras before the demon and convince him God will not intervene in human suffering, or has never existed. The power to discourage is evil's greatest tool for leading individuals away from God, and playing the mommy card proves devastating to Karras. Even bringing in Father Merrin, an experienced and far-from-jaded exorcist, to lead the proceedings is not as effective as one hopes, for Merrin's health is as weak as Karras' faith.

It need hardly be said that all the terrible things we see are sufficient in their power to diminish hope and encourage fleeing. We are so utterly gripped by the malefic manifestations that we forget entirely that Linda Blair is an actress, instead of the embodiment of all our fears of harm. Credit the Oscar®-winning sound designers and Mercedes McCambridge (who supplied the demon's voice) for creating the most disturbing polytonal growl issuing from Regan's occupied lungs. The Exorcist, from a strictly artistic standpoint, is virtually unparalleled in its recruiting of all of cinema's bag of tricks to suspend your disbelief. The film is a consuming experience, and perfectly representative of the power of motion pictures. (That said, may I move to change the film's MPAA rating to NC-17? I would never subject my teenage child to such a film while it's rated 'R', and sincerely doubt my accompanying them would help one bit.)

Equally testifying to the film's excellence, however, is its refusal to provide an explanation for all that transpires. Numerous elements remain vague from start to finish, like the murder of Chris MacNeil's director and the subsequent police investigation, and the medallion found in Iraq that eventually makes its way into Karras' hands. When not gripped in abject horror, you spend the entirety of the film trying to piece things together, with limited success. Even at the end, when a freshly exorcised Regan stares a little too long at a priest's collar, you are left pondering its significance. Like the psychiatrists' and doctors' inability to explain Regan's altered behavior away, the film refrains from handing you all of the answers, and this only amplifies its power to discomfit. Our nerves much prefer when movies like Scream3 tie up all the loose ends neatly before the closing credits unspool.

Even after a second viewing, The Exorcist easily remains the most frightening movie I've ever seen. It's clear filmmakers are having a hard time creating anything to compete: when was the last time a film that trafficked in horror received so many Oscar® nominations, or attracted such a credible cast? My respect for the film remains undiminished, if not magnified after a decade of film study. And yes, I did sleep with the light on after seeing it again. Need you a greater testimony? But what remains important is that I, like the Fathers Merrin and Karras, confronted my demons instead of hoping they'll just go away. That is where faith comes in, and I am grateful the movies can provide an opportunity to exercise it.