Great Character: Regan MacNeil (“The Exorcist”)
In a month-long run-up to Halloween, our Great Character focus this month is boogeyman. This week, Jason Cuthbert explores Regan MacNeil from the 1973 movie The Exorcist:
A cute, cuddly, Cabbage Patch Kid-looking 12 year-old named Regan turns into a malignant monster, with Lucifer pulling her shaky puppet strings, in the 1973 high standard of horror movies — The Exorcist. Actress Linda Blair was only a kid herself during production, directed by William Friedkin (The French Connection, Killer Joe) from a screenplay by William Peter Blatty from his own novel — winning an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay in the process. Along with the first Oscar nomination for a horror movie, The Exorcist also managed to scare up a lot of business: over $441 million worldwide. Children may have been known to raise hell — but never like this.
The Exorcist plot summary from IMDB:
When a girl is possessed by a mysterious entity, her mother seeks the help of two priests to save her daughter.
How often do we come across a fascinating and terrifying antagonist that we actually feel really sorry for? Regan is both the villain and its primary victim, a reluctant flesh vessel for the devil. She swipes your sympathy while she simultaneously hurls violent profanity at her loving mother, doctors and priests — littering her bedroom with filthy forms of evil. Regan’s mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn) is a movie actress temporarily renting this haunted house. There are no resourceful family members nearby to rely on, not even Regan’s absentee father. Forcing the devil himself out of her daughter is definitely no job for psychiatrists.
Poor Regan now has a pasty scraped and scratched mug, uttering inhuman growls and possessing sick powers that could make your head spin — and hers.
The real interplay between good and evil emerges when Regan/Demon comes face-to-face with Father Damien Karras, a priest based out of Georgetown University with a background in psychiatry who is beginning to lose his faith.
Demon: I’m not Regan.
Father Damien Karras: Well, then let’s introduce ourselves. I’m Damien Karras.
Demon: And I’m the Devil. Now kindly undo these straps.
Father Damien Karras: If you’re the Devil, why not make the straps disappear?
Demon: That’s much too vulgar a display of power, Karras.
This spiritual clash tests the limits of Regan’s ability to withstand the torment of being possessed and Father Karras’ internal stamina while being at a religious crossroad and feeling guilty about his mother’s passing.
Demon: What an excellent day for an exorcism.
Father Damien Karras: You would like that?
Demon: Intensely.
Father Damien Karras: But wouldn’t that drive you out of Regan?
Demon: It would bring us together.
Father Damien Karras: You and Regan?
Demon: You and us.
No one with half a heart and even the minutest sense of decency wants to see a really young girl projectile puking at priests and masturbating with a crucifix. This taboo irony makes Regan’s demonic activity become even more primal and viscerally violent. Fear for her well-being accelerates, while her mother’s sanity looks loosely held together with wet Band-Aids as her options diminish with each scene.
There is no winning whatsoever when mankind’s worst antagonist — Satan — is alive inside your daughter. Even if Regan’s mother survives, she will never know pure bliss again — scarred for life. Regan’s relentless, unpredictable and down right savage experience as the bodily host for the unholy makes her an incredibly GREAT CHARACTER.
There is perhaps no Boogeyman more frightening than one who lives under your roof, especially if that Boogeyman is your own child.
Thanks to Jason for the post. Next week, another cinematic boogeyman.
Meanwhile join us in comments for a discussion of Regan from The Exorcist.
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