Review: The Exorcist

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, I guess I can now put The Exorcist on my list of movies that are much better than the book (It's right up there with Fight Club, The Shining, and A Clockwork Orange, two of which were directed by Stanley Kubrick). It's not that The Exorcist is bad, per se, as there were a few moments that really got under my skin. But it just can't compete with the movie. That music, that face, that voice. Just everything about the movie trumps this book by a mile.

And I think lot of that can be attributed to the lackluster side-story. The Detective Kinderman sections felt like they made up half the book, and they weren't even that interesting (I don't even remember the character in the film to be honest). And while the book is a relatively quick read, I felt that there were sections that moved much faster than others. Again, anything with Kinderman felt slow, while all the stuff that dealt with the possession moved at a rapid pace. If you're deciding on reading the book, I'd say to just watch the movie instead. It's superior in every way.

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