Part Horror, Part Drama, Mostly Dull
I don’t know the real story that this movie is based on, but suffice it to say that the inspiration from this movie came from a book written about the happenings revolving this young girl’s life. The film seeks to question the audience about their beliefs in demons, possession, spirituality, and so forth, by presenting a story about a young, pious girl who is stricken with horrific bouts of violent, bizarre behavior. Some argue mental illness, others, including Tom Wilkinson’s character, Father Moore, attributed it to demonic possession.
Less than half of the movie is presented in flashbacks, with the rest of the film taking place in and out of the courtroom where Father Moore has been accused by the family of Emily of wrongful death by the way of medical neglect. Laura Linney plays the agnostic lawyer who defends Father Moore. Through Father Moore and other characters who take the stand, we are presented with the trials of Emily’s situation – the unexplainable fits of rage and violence against others and herself, the bizarre voices and languages that she screams out – it’s quite odd, and disturbing, and nearly scary a lot of times, but then before you know it the film takes us back to the calm and quiet of the court room where the events get analyzed and rationalized. Still, the horror scenes in Emily Rose are fairly effective and powerful, largely due to the fine acting. The courtroom scenes aren’t nearly as exciting, giving this film an overall tepid feel to it.
On Blu-ray
On Blu-ray, I thought the film looked very good, with the exception of some of the background scenes and skin textures at times. For the vast majority of the film, the video looks excellent, it’s crisp and sharp. Some background scenes however, look a bit compressed and blocky, and skin textures in a handful of scenes also have this look. Not a huge deal, but noticeable. The audio track came off just a bit quiet in my opinion, making dialogue kind of hard to hear at times. Other than this complaint, the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track is very good, making those horror scenes a little more creepy with the intensity of Emily’s possessions and her vocals.
As far as extra features go, there is a small batch for fans to dig into. First up, there is an audio commentary track with director Scott Derrickson. A single, three minute deleted scene in SD is included that shows Laura Linney’s character talking with someone at a bar; I can see why this wasn’t included in the film, but it’s such a moot scene that it’s almost surprising it’s on the disc. Rounding out the features are three featurettes:
-Genesis of the Story: This twenty minutes, SD feature includes interviews from the director and a few cast and crew members with generic making of details and why this film is so interesting, etc.
-Casting the Film: Clocking in around twelve minutes, this is a feature where Derrickson explains the choices for the roles of the characters.
-Visual Design: Around twenty minutes in length, this featurette describes the filming and effects techniques used in filming the intense exorcism scenes.