On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 71/166 |
David Mumpower |
It's best described as Boston Legal with Demons. I would have preferred Horror Film with No Lawyers. |
In the mid-70s, the mere existence of the movie The Exorcist was creating global issues for the clergy. A wave of paranoia and psychosomatic behavior swept across the lands, and its impact began to permeate through all facets of life. Demonic possession was in and all sorts of melodramatic attention seekers were suddenly showing symptoms that would have gotten them burned at the stake a couple of centuries before.
1976 saw arguably the most infamous of these instances occur. Anneliese Michel, a German co-ed began to manifest behavior normally associated with demonic possession. And epilepsy.
At the behest of her parents, a group of Bavarian priests oversaw her during her period of extreme illness. What happened next is a source of significant conjecture and will be the subject of the movie. Using the Rashomon methodology of showing multiple points of view of the same set of circumstances, the doom of Anneliese is examined.
What the courts maintained about the situation was that the priests and the parents were guilty of negligent homicide. How did this happen? Rather than continue to treat the girl using epilepsy medications, the group of caretakers determined the young woman bewitched. They resolved to perform a series of exorcisms to cast out the foul spirits which possessed the girl. In the process, she died but they maintained her soul was saved.
Based on the book The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel, the film will explore the young girl's tragic ending. Was she afflicted by demons and saved by the church? Or was she an unfortunate epileptic killed by panicked clergy who let ignorance and paranoia overwhelm their common sense? (David Mumpower/BOP)
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