Chris (The Exorcist)

FEAR: LOSING YOUR CHILD

The Exorcist is a film so ingrained in American pop culture, it’s hard not to have heard about it.

Even if you’ve never seen the original William Friedkin film, you’ve probably seen some reference to it in one medium or another.

Most people are now familiar with the tropes of possessed people projectile vomiting, spinning their heads around, or walking like a spider on all fours, because of this very scary film.

The movie centers around an aging priest and his lifelong battle with a Mesopotamian demon who is determined to destroy his faith. The demon decides to lure the titular exorcist to Washington D.C. by possessing the body of a pre-teen girl named Regan, played by Linda Blair.

While Regan is the character most people probably remember and associate with this film, thanks to her terrifying performance and a very effectively creepy makeup job, the horror heroine of this film, to me, is her mother Chris, played by Ellen Burstyn. The priests in the film come to terms with losing their faith, while Chris must worry about losing her daughter.

The film very cleverly establishes Chris as an atheist at the beginning of the film, making her realization of her daughter’s supernatural predicament all the more upsetting, as well as realistic.

Chris is not a hysterical, religious fanatic to begin with, and she very understandably takes the mental-health route when Regan initially acts out of character.

Countless scenes are dedicated to Chris toiling over her daughter’s well-being through meetings with psychologists, specialists and doctors, all to no avail.

To me, these are some of the hardest scenes in the film to watch, even harder to watch than the famous gross-out moments, like Regan vomiting on the priest, or twisting her head all the way around. The images of Regan, confused and miserable, and her mother in agony at the sight of her daughter in such pain are very effective.

Dealing with a possessed child would be hard enough for two parents, but Chris is single mother on top of everything else, further strengthening her resolve, all while making the audience feel even worse for her. 

When she finally comes to terms with the fact that something she didn’t even believe in is happening to her own flesh and blood, her desperation is palpable.

Some people say that being a mother is the hardest job of all, and in Chris’s case, I don’t think anyone would dare to argue with that.