Aby Williamson

GENRE RESEARCH- POSSESSION

THE FIRST POSSESSION MOVIE

• Exorcist: The Beginning, 1973

• The Exorcist was an adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel in 1971.

• The book was inspired by the 1949 exorcism case of Ronald Doe. This horror film was directed by William Friedkin. The film is about, when a girl is possessed by a mysterious entity, her mother seeks the help of two priests to save her daughter.

• It became one of the highest earning movies of all time, grossing over $441 million worldwide

This movie was then followed by another two movies

• Exorcist II: The Heretic, 1977

• Exorcist III: Legion, 1990

BURNT OFFERINGS - 1976• This film is a mystery horror film

• It is based on based on the 1973 novel with the same name by Robert Marasco

• It is about a family who moves into a haunted house that rejuvenates itself with each injury and death that occurs inside of it.

• Although when it was first realised it received negative reviews by the critics in 1977 it did win many awards.

THE AMITYVILLE HORROR- 1979 AND 2005 – ALSO BASED ON TRUE EVENTS

• The first film is based around the book written by Jay Anson with the same name. The book is said to be based on the real-life paranormal experiences of the Lutz family, but has led to controversy and lawsuits over its truthfulness.

• The main plot line to these events consists of a background to where the Lutz family move to which was that a man named ‘Ronald DeFeo, Jr. shot and killed his family at their home. He killed five members of his family in their beds, but his youngest sister, Jodie, had been killed in her bedroom closet. He claimed that he was persuaded to kill them by voices he had heard in the house.’

• The 2005 remake was directed by Andrew Douglas

GORY POSSESSION

The Evil Dead- 1981

• It was written and directed by Sam Raimi

• The plot of the movie is five college students vacationing in an isolated cabin in a wooded area. Their vacation becomes gruesome when they find an audiotape that releases demons, who one by one possess each member of the group, leading to increasingly gory mayhem.

• The film was shot on location in a remote cabin in, Tennessee.

• The film was followed by ‘The Evil Dead II’ in 1987

BASED ON TRUE EVENTS

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

• This is a 2005 American courtroom drama horror film

• It was directed by Scott Derrickson.

• The film is briefly based on a true story of Anneliese Michel (a young German Catholic woman who died in 1976 after unsuccessful attempts to perform an exorcism upon her with psychotropic drugs) and follows a self-proclaimed agnostic defence lawyer representing a parish priest who is accused by the state of negligent homicide after he performed an exorcism.

• The film won "Best Frightened Performance" at the MTV Movie Awards in 2006

EFFECT OF HOME FILMING-PARANORMAL ACTIVITY- 2007

• Paranormal activity was first made in 2007 and shown at a ‘Screamfest film festival’ but was actually realised on DVD and Blu-ray in 2009 worldwide.

• The movie has been very popular and now has 3 others movies to follow this with another soon to be in 2013.

• Its an American supernatural horror film that has is written and directed by Oren Peli.

• Peli took a year to prepare his own house for shooting. The plot consists of a young couple who are haunted by a supernatural presence in their home. It is filmed in the style of ‘found footage’ from cameras set up by the couple to find what is haunting them.

PHYSIOLOGICAL HORROR Session 9- 2001

• Directed by Brad Anderson and written by Anderson and Stephen Gevedon

• The plot in this movie is on the growing tension within an asbestos removal crew working at an abandoned mental asylum, which is paralleled by the gradual revelation of a former patient's disturbed past through recorded audio tapes of the patient's hypnotherapy sessions.

• The film was inspired by a murder that took place in Boston, where Anderson grew up, in the mid-1990s, in which a man supposedly killed his wife after she accidentally burnt his dinner, then cut out her heart and lungs and put them in his backyard on a stake

EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING - 2004

• This movie is a prequel to the first ‘Exorcist’ in 1973

• The movie itself wasn’t actually very financially successful and did receive negative reviews.

• Although the film's plot centres around Father Merrin's exorcism of a boy in Africa many years before the events in The Exorcist, little effort was made to keep the story consistent. Which could be why it wasn’t very successful

SUPERNATURAL HORROR• The Rite is a 2011 supernatural horror film

• Directed by Mikael Håfström and Written by Michael Petroni

• The film is based on the book The Making of a Modern Exorcist by Rome-based Matt Baglio, which was published in 2009

• The book itself is about real events as witnessed and recounted by then, exorcist-in-training, American Father Gary Thomas and his experiences from being sent to Rome to be trained and work daily with veteran clergy of the practice.