Father Lankester Merrin thinks that he has glimpsed the face of Evil. In the years following World War II, Merrin is relentlessly haunted by memories of the unspeakable brutality perpetrated against the innocent people of his parish by the Nazi’s. In the wake of all he has seen, both his faith in his fellow man and the Almighty have deserted him. He can no longer honestly call himself a man of God. Merrin has traveled far from his native Holland in a desperate attempt to escape the horrors that he witnessed there. While drifting through Cairo, he is approached by a collector of rare antiquities to join a British archeological excavation in the remote Turkana region of Kenya. They have unearthed a Christian Byzantine church in inexplicably pristine condition -- as if it had been buried on the day it was completed. The collector wants Merrin, an Oxford-educated archeologist, to find an ancient relic hidden within the church before the British discover it. But beneath the church, something much older sleeps, waiting to be awoken. Madness descends upon the local villagers and the contingent of British soldiers sent to guard the excavation. Merrin watches helplessly as the atrocities of war are repeated against another innocent village -- atrocities he had prayed never to see again. The blood of innocents flows freely on the East African plain, and the horror has only just begun. In the place where Evil was born, Merrin will finally see its true face.

This movie really isn’t that bad, but by no means is it that great either. It just seems to be happy to be just your above average horror flick with really bad timing. I don’t understand why studio execs release typical horror films like this in august rather than October where they belong. It’s fun to explore the exploits and beginning of Father Merrin but its really not that necessary. The original Exorcist made over 30 years before this is a hundred times better as it really had that creepy feeling and some of the most memorable horror moments of all time. This movie just seems to concerned in talking about evil, rather than just going to a good possession and exorcist, which is a shame.

The acting wasn’t that bad but again it wasn’t that great either. Stellan Skarsgård does an OK job at playing Father Merrin but he never does anything really that great to make you make the connection between him and Max von Sydow who played the original Father Merrin. I just got the feeling from the movie that everything was done just to be all right rather than really making an attempt at being great. The movie makes you jump a couple of times, there is some really cool scenes of exorcism at the end of the movie and it was fun to see a little bit of the history of Father Merrin but that was it. I may have been to kind to the movie as I saw it in October when it should have been released at a time when I have been craving horror flicks, but the movie was ok.
3 stars out of 5