Not too many scares to be had in 'Possessed'

By Tam Notosusanto

JAKARTA (JP): The film trailer says it all. A rainy night with thunder and lightning. A youngster in bed, writhing, as he is shaken about by unseen, demonic forces. Cryptic signs appearing on his body. Priests shoving crosses in his face as they furiously recite spells. There's no doubt about it, this movie looks like a futile attempt to remake The Exorcist.

Possessed, however, does not wish to be the 21st century version of the 1973 horror classic. The reason the two films look similar is because they are both based on an actual incident that took place in America in the 1950s. The difference is William Peter Blatty fictionalized the events in a novel, which he soon turned into the Oscar-winning screenplay that William Friedkin directed.

The filmmakers of Possessed chose to stay true to the facts. The movie is adapted from the book Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism by Thomas B. Allen. The book documents the events surrounding the attempts by priests to free a young boy's soul from evil spirits.

While in The Exorcist it is a 12-year-old girl (played by Linda Blair) who is taken hostage by the devil, Possessed claims that it was actually a boy who was in distress, and although his real identity is never revealed, here he is identified as Robbie Mannheim (Jonathan Malen), an 11-year-old living in St. Louis.

The first indication that something unusual is happening to Robbie is at school, when he appears to fling some desks at a couple of bullies. There is a similar incident at home, when his parents are witness to some furniture acrobatics that are clearly beyond Robbie's strength. Soon, the boy begins to yell and spit out profanities from his bedroom.

Mr. and Mrs. Mannheim (Michael Rhoades and Shannon Lawson) contact doctors and therapists, but nothing seems to work. They finally call in the Reverend Eckhardt (Richard Waugh), a priest who specializes in supernatural phenomenon. Eckhardt seems to be getting close to the core of the problem when he is attacked and wounded by Robbie.

The Mannheims then go to Father William Bowdern (Timothy Dalton), a professor at the Jesuit-run St. Louis University. Along with his colleague, Father Raymond McBride (Henry Czerny), Bowdern agrees to try to help Robbie by conducting a series of exorcism rituals that were once used in 17th century France.

Their superior, Archbishop Hume (Christopher Plummer), gives them his reluctant blessing, on the condition that the priests keep their work secret and never let the public know that the Roman Catholic Church sanctions exorcism.

So Father Bill and company begin their confrontation with the devil, with Robbie's soul hanging in the balance. The struggle appears to be more than they can handle, especially when the evil spirits dig up Bowdern's traumatic war experiences as a means to weaken the priest.

In addition to using the same story, Possessed inevitably employs the same theatrics that The Exorcist put to such good use, mainly in having the possessed youngster spew obscenities, float in the air and speak in a voice not his own. Possessed, however, never manages to be the effectively scary movie that The Exorcist is. But then again, maybe that's not what Possessed was trying to achieve. This TV movie (originally shown on the cable channel Showtime but blown up for the big screens of our local theaters) is a reminder that this incident really took place and was witnessed by several people. As a docudrama, it works.

The movie is new territory for director Steven E. De Souza, who has worked on action movies for most of his career, directing Street Fighter and cowriting the action hits 48 Hrs., Die Hard and Beverly Hills Cop III, among other projects. Adapting the Thomas Allen book with coscreenwriter Michael Lazarou, De Souza confuses us with the unnecessary addition of Piper Laurie, who appears briefly in the beginning of the movie as the boy's eccentric great aunt who, it is suggested at first, is responsible for Robbie's predicament. De Souza also fails to provide a satisfying ending.

Despite these hitches, overall Possessed is an enjoyable movie. The cast never disappoints, with Timothy Dalton, perhaps the only non-Canadian actor here, clearly leaving behind his James Bond days and returning to his Shakespearian roots. But the spotlight should be directed on the promising Jonathan Malen, who steals the show every time he appears on screen. ** (out of ****)