FilmRDemonic & Possession Supernatural Witchcraft & Occult

Exorcist: The Beginning2004

Name: Exorcist: The Beginning
Genre: Demonic & Possession, Supernatural, Witchcraft & Occult, Gothic
Released: 2004-08-20
Rating: 4.7

“Go back to where the horror began.”

Directed by Renny Harlin

4.7

Crypt Score

Blended from 4 sources

IMDb 5.1Rotten Tomatoes 10%Metacritic 30TMDB 5.4

✍ Review

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Year

2004

Runtime

114 min

Box Office

Budget

$80,000,000

Revenue (worldwide)

$78,000,586

Domestic

$41,821,986

🏆 6 nominations total

The premise

Years before Father Merrin helped save Regan MacNeil’s soul, he first encounters the demon Pazuzu in East Africa.

Horror Vault's take

Long before his fateful encounter in Georgetown, a younger Father Lankester Merrin travels to post-WWII East Africa as an archaeologist, drawn to a newly unearthed Byzantine church that seems impossibly out of place in the Kenyan landscape. What waits beneath the earth is far older and more malevolent than any historical curiosity, forcing a man who has abandoned God to confront a darkness that demands his faith — or his soul. This prequel to the original Exorcist charts the origins of Merrin's legendary battle with the demon Pazuzu, grounding cosmic horror in the scarred aftermath of war and colonial violence.

Content: Demonic Possession Imagery, Graphic Violence, Disturbing Religious Imagery, Depictions Of Wartime Atrocity, Scenes Involving Children In Peril