The WTF Really series looks back at the true events behind the Scott Derrickson film The Exorcism of Emily Rose
And we’re back. We’re back to possession and we are back to it being heavy on the religious side and everything purported to be a true story. This time we are looking a little deeper into the legal implications of what happens when someone is injured or even dies during an exorcism, sanctioned or not. The Exorcism of Emily Rose (watch it HERE) was a massive commercial hit and garnered middle of the pack reviews when it came out in 2005. 2005 was not a banner year for horror and it was different from the slew of remakes as well as setting itself apart from nearly everything else that came out that year. While The Asylum, known for schlock takes on popular products, would release their version of the true story in 2011 and German film Requiem would come out to far better acclaim the next year, Emily Rose would be the first attempt to tell the story of Annelise Michel. First isn’t always best or most accurate though so how close does Emily Rose come to telling the story correctly? Make sure you get a good lawyer as we find out what REALLY happened to The Exorcism of Emily Rose.
The Exorcism of Emily Rose came out from Screen Gems and Sony Pictures on September 9th, 2005. It had a budget of 19 million but brought back a whopping 145 million at the box office. While the aggregate score for the movie is nothing special, Roger Ebert gave it 3 stars and considered it both smart and intriguing. While it was a decent success, the director was personally let down as he expected the movie to be much more successful than it was. That director is now horror mainstay Scott Derrickson. Derrickson impressed a lot of people, myself included, with his direction and writing on one of the many, MANY, random DTV Hellraiser sequels Inferno. After this movie he would keep up the momentum with all time classic Sinister, The Day the Earth Stood Still remake, Dr. Strange, and The Black Phone.
The writer with Derrickson on Emily Rose is Paul Harris Boardman who is kind of a writing partner for Derrickson with credits on that previously mentioned Hellraiser movie as well as Deliver Us from Evil amongst others. The cast is a fun one with Tom Wilkinson, Laura Linney, Jennifer Carpenter, and Campbell Scott as the leads. We also have smaller parts from Colm Feore and Henry Czerny. It’s a courtroom drama for much of the run time but when it needs to throw in horror, it does so with a deft touch and intention. Wilkinson was a stellar character actor who broke through with 2 Oscar nominations over his 130 roles. In terms of horror output, he somehow never found himself in any other ones and it could be that he wasn’t a fan and saw this as a courtroom drama more than a horror movie, something I think others would agree with.
Laura Linney is an incredible actress who has 3 Oscar nominations to her name and who also has almost no horror to her name except for fellow WTF REALLY exploration The Mothman Prophecies. Campbell Scott isn’t a name or face you may immediately recognize but he does have a very distinct voice who, shocker, has no other horror credits on his lengthy resume apart from a voice in a Tales from the Crypt episode and doing a version of The Shining in audiobook form. Finally, we have Jennifer Carpenter who was recommended by Laura Linney after they did a play together. She was in Dexter on TV as well as the remake of REC with Quarantine but also did voice work like in a couple Mortal Kombat movies as Sonya Blade and the awesome horror game The Evil Within.
The movie opens with some monstrous sounds in the background and the ever popular “This film is based on a true story” hook that movies like to use even when they have nothing to do with a true story. We then see a farmhouse with police officers, a medical examiner, and a priest where a crime has apparently been committed. This is the Rose residence and Emily has died after an exorcism to try and help her and Father Moore is arrested for negligent homicide of the young girl. The prosecuting team picks a religious man to be the lead and the defense selects an aggressive up and comer played by Linney. If she wins, she will get to be a partner in her firm, but she is under no circumstances allowed to let her client testify. He won’t take the plea deal and wants to tell Emily Rose’s story for the world to know. We then get some back story about the family and Emily going off to college where we learn that the entire family is very religious.
(Factometer 25%) The story told about Emily Rose in our movie is loosely based on the story of Annalese Michel which was told in the nonfiction story The Exorcism of Annalese Michel by Felicitas Goodman. Emily Rose in the movie died while only 19 and as a college student while Annalese was 23 years old at the time of her death. They did get the family life right though with Annalese being raised by a catholic family, though she was born in Germany and that’s where the real-life events took place while the movie puts the story in the US. Apart from the area though, the family members also match up from the real events to screen. There was a trial which we will get to later but in real life it was two priests that performed the exorcism as well as the parents that were put on trial. The parents were defended by one of the lawyers from the Nuremberg trials while the priests were defended by people hired from the church rather than an up-and-coming lawyer looking to get partner.
The movie moves to a lot of the behind the scenes stuff with the lawyers and the plea agreement before moving into the beginning of the trial. The prosecution argues that Emily Rose had schizophrenia and epilepsy which, among other things, made her have seizures that would appear that she was being possessed by unseen forces and make herself believe delusional thoughts leaning into the supernatural. They call multiple people the stand including doctors and people close to Emily and the family. We also get to see what Emily thought she went through with possession happening at 3am. The doctors that are brought in to testify say that Emily requested to be taken off of her medication and that would have led to many of the problems continuing. We learn that Emily’s cause of death was essentially trauma and malnutrition. Some of these seemed to be from self-inflicted wounds and others came from epileptic seizures. The conclusion was that Emily was both epileptic and schizophrenic, something that the doctor coined himself but doesn’t have in the field wide enough yet.
(Factometer 50%) in 1970, Annalise Michel was suffering from seizures and was prescribed medication that was designed to help both her seizures but was also for the treatment of schizophrenia. After a while, the family sought out an exorcism because Annalise began to claim she could feel and see things as well as having become possessed by a demon. The family was behind this as they saw, just like in the movie version, Annalise begins to do things like harm herself, eat bugs, and even drink her own urine. The exorcism was approved after the church claimed she didn’t look epileptic and looked more like she had been possessed by a demon.
The trial continues but Erin feels that they need help from doctors on their own side to say that Emily wasn’t an epileptic, or they will lose. We get more firsthand accounts from both Father Moore and Emily’s family about what was happening during the exorcism and to Emily in general, including speaking foreign tongues and acting very strangely. The trial goes on and the doctor who treated Emily agrees to take the stand but then is haunted by something and tries to flee before dying in a car accident. We see Emily struggle with religious artifacts and inside holy ground from testimony from her family but are told that she most likely learned the foreign languages in school and hurt herself making it look like stigmata.
(Factometer 25%) Emily’s family did say that they saw the signs of stigmata appear on her body and that Emily herself said that it was painful to be in the church. There was no witness for the defense that died mysteriously. Another major difference is that Emily Rose in the movie stops taking her medication because she wanted to face her trials with her beliefs alone, but the real Annalese ended up taking more meds to try and help herself and her symptoms. While the movie shows a few different sessions of exorcism, in real life the two men performed 67 separate attempts at exorcism over 10 months from 1975 to 1976.
The trial continues and Father Moore reads a letter from Emily saying she can feel everything going on with her battle. The jury finds Father Moore guilty of negligent homicide and when he is going to be sentenced, the jury recommends that the defendant get time served so that Moore doesn’t actually have to go to prison. He never returns to his parish and never appeals his conviction while also saying that he looks forward to the day that Emily gets declared a saint.
(Factometer 50%) At the real trial, it was argued that Annalese could have still been saved up to a week before her death had they stopped the exorcisms and allowed her to heal. She died of malnutrition and weighed next to nothing when she died. Much like in the film, the church didn’t want to testify or make anything a big deal in the press. Both the family and the two priests were subsequently convicted of negligent homicide, and all given suspended sentences and asked to cover the cost of the trial. In later years, the number of exorcisms in Germany declined and the church was seen as at fault for their role in Michel’s death.
The movie is a solid and well-made legal horror thriller with its inspired by tag clearly there in the overall story. While the specifics were changed dramatically and many more things were added, it’s a fair re-imagining of a poor girl’s fate. The movie did well and is not brought up nearly as much as it probably should while the next years German made movie is seen as a lot more deserving. Check out the movie and then read all about it to decide for yourself if it was a negligent homicide or truly something on the supernatural side.
A couple of the previous episodes of WTF Really Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To check out the other shows we have on the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel, head over to the channel – and subscribe while you’re there!