The People Who Stay

There is something profoundly human that continues to endure beyond the supernatural elements of William Friedkin's The Exorcist. While evil and demonic possession provide the terrifying surface of the film, they are not what continues drawing me back more than fifty years later. What has endured is Friedkin's remarkable portrait of ordinary people responding to extraordinary suffering.

His characters are not heroic because they are fearless. They are heroic because they continue answering another person's suffering despite grief, doubt, weakness, and exhaustion. Through Father Damien Karras, Chris MacNeil, and Father Merrin, Friedkin quietly asks a question that reaches far beyond horror.

How do we continue showing up for another person when suffering and despair threaten to consume us as well?

Friedkin begins exploring that question long before evil ever enters the MacNeil household.

One of the film's most revealing moments arrives when Chris discovers that Regan has been playing with a Ouija board and speaking with an imaginary friend named Captain Howdy. As Regan demonstrates that the planchette can move on its own, Friedkin does something quietly unexpected. Rather than emphasizing the unsettling nature of the moment, he turns his attention toward Ellen Burstyn's performance.

Chris smiles.

She tilts her head.

Resting her cheek gently against her hand, she asks with quiet affection, "You really don't want me to play, do you?"

It is such an ordinary response that we almost overlook what Friedkin has accomplished. Faced with something that should invite suspicion or fear, Chris remains entirely attentive to her daughter. Her attention never drifts toward the unexplained phenomenon. Before asking us to confront horror, Friedkin first invites us into the relationship between a mother and her child.

That quiet choice becomes the foundation upon which the rest of the film gently unfolds.

As Regan's condition slowly deteriorates, Chris exhausts every explanation that medicine, psychology, and science can offer. Specialists come and go. Painful medical procedures fail to provide answers. Yet through every disappointment, her purpose never changes. She refuses to abandon her daughter. The circumstances grow increasingly frightening, but the love first revealed around the Ouija board remains unchanged.

The possession may be extraordinary.

A mother's refusal to leave her child's side is not.

If Chris embodies the steadfast love of a mother, Father Damien Karras embodies something equally human: the willingness to answer another person's suffering even while carrying his own.

That burden first reveals itself in his relationship with his aging mother. Jason Miller performs these scenes with remarkable restraint. Their conversations are quiet, almost painfully ordinary, yet every hesitation, every lingering glance, suggests a son haunted by the feeling that he cannot give his mother the life he longs for her to have. Her loneliness gradually becomes his own. When she dies, Karras is left carrying not only grief, but guilt—the quiet ache of believing he somehow failed the person he loved most.

Earlier in the film, Karras confides to Father Dyer, "I think that I've lost my faith, Tom." Jason Miller doesn't deliver the line as a dramatic crisis of belief. He speaks it almost as a confession of exhaustion. His eyes belong to a man who has witnessed so much suffering that hope itself has become difficult to recognize.

Following his mother's death, Friedkin includes one of the film's most easily overlooked moments. Father Dyer remains with Karras in his room, sharing a drink with his grieving friend. As the conversation slowly gives way to silence, Karras falls asleep in his chair. Rather than leaving, Dyer quietly removes the cigarette from his hand, takes off his shoes, gently covers him with a blanket, and lets him rest.

Nothing supernatural occurs.

There are no dramatic speeches.

No swelling music.

Only one friend quietly caring for another.

It is one of Friedkin's simplest scenes, yet it quietly reveals the moral vision that runs throughout The Exorcist. Before priests confront evil, Friedkin first shows us one man responding to another's grief with quiet fidelity. Dyer cannot remove Karras' suffering, but he refuses to leave him alone in it.

That same spirit of compassion reaches its emotional center during the quiet hallway scene outside Regan's bedroom after another failed exorcism. Karras sits alone, his shoulders slumped beneath the weight of exhaustion. His mother's death still lingers over him, and years spent ministering to poverty, addiction, and human misery have left his faith feeling less like certainty than memory.

When Chris quietly approaches him, Friedkin allows the silence to settle between them before either of them speaks.

"Is she going to die?" she finally asks.

Karras immediately looks at her.

"No."

Nothing about his own circumstances has changed. His grief remains. His doubts remain. Yet, for one brief moment, he sets aside the weight of his own suffering and gives his full attention to someone else's. His purpose is no longer found in certainty, but in responding to the frightened mother standing before him.

For all of its reputation as one of cinema's greatest horror films, The Exorcist is ultimately interested in something much quieter.

Not evil itself.

But the people who choose to remain beside another person's suffering, even while carrying burdens of their own.

One of the film's most remarkable expressions of that responsibility comes during the conversation in which Chris asks Karras to perform an exorcism.

On the surface, almost nothing happens.

Chris reaches out in desperation while Karras hesitates, unwilling to promise what he no longer believes he can give. A lesser filmmaker might have hurried toward the next frightening image, but Friedkin understands that trust cannot be rushed. Instead, he allows two exhausted people the space to slowly encounter one another.

Jason Miller and Ellen Burstyn never force the moment. Their pauses, hesitant glances, and restrained performances communicate what words cannot. Karras is not refusing Chris because he lacks compassion. He is a man wrestling with uncertainty, reluctant to offer reassurance he no longer knows how to give. Chris, in turn, is not asking him to explain the impossible.

She is asking him not to leave her alone in it.

What has always stayed with me about Friedkin is his remarkable patience. He so often chooses to observe rather than dramatize, trusting his actors to reveal what quieter films sometimes overlook. Before we are ever asked to believe in demonic possession, he first asks us to believe in two ordinary people trying to carry a burden neither fully understands.

That same spirit of attentiveness extends beyond Chris's relationship with Regan. During Lieutenant Kinderman's investigation, he sheepishly admits that he lied about wanting an autograph.

"I lied," he confesses with an embarrassed smile. "It's for me."

It is such a small moment that another film might pass over it without a second thought. Chris immediately recognizes his embarrassment. She could laugh. She could expose the deception. Instead, Ellen Burstyn responds with quiet grace, allowing Kinderman to preserve his dignity without ever making him feel foolish.

Officially, it is an interrogation.

Emotionally, it becomes an act of companionship.

Moments like these quietly shape the moral imagination of The Exorcist. Friedkin reminds us that compassion rarely announces itself. More often, it appears in ordinary gestures of patience, dignity, and attentiveness. The true measure of his characters is not found in how they confront demons, but in how they respond to one another.

Against Owen Roizman's restrained cinematography, Georgetown continues almost indifferently around them. Cars pass. Conversations drift through the streets. Ordinary life carries on just beyond the characters' private anguish. Within that ordinary world, even the smallest gesture of compassion begins to feel extraordinary.

I find myself returning to these quiet moments more often than the film's famous images. Friedkin understands that horror has little meaning if we do not first believe in the humanity of those experiencing it. Every silence earns our compassion. Every act of kindness deepens our understanding of the people at the center of the story. By the time terror reaches its climax, it matters because the relationships already do.

That same understanding finds its clearest expression in Father Merrin.

When we first meet him in Iraq, Friedkin quietly draws our attention not to his authority, but to his frailty. Max von Sydow's face carries the weight of age. His movements are deliberate, almost weary. Before he speaks a single word, Friedkin gently reminds us that time has begun to overtake him.

Then comes one of the film's most unforgettable images.

Merrin stands before the towering statue of Pazuzu. The demon fills the frame, dwarfing the aging priest beneath it. Judging by the expression on Merrin's face, he seems to understand exactly what awaits him. There is no illusion of triumph. No certainty that he will survive.

He goes anyway.

That single decision tells us more about Merrin than any sermon ever could.

Before the exorcism even begins, Friedkin quietly reminds us that Merrin is not a symbol of perfection, but a man. Chris offers him a drink.

"I know that I shouldn't," Merrin replies with a faint smile. "But my will is weak."

It is one of the film's most revealing moments.

Merrin does not present himself as spiritually invincible. He admits weakness with disarming honesty. Friedkin refuses to place him above ordinary human frailty. Instead, he shows us an aging man whose body is failing, whose will is imperfect, and who nevertheless answers when another human being needs him.

He walks toward suffering not because he believes himself incapable of fear, but because another person's suffering has asked something of him.

Perhaps that is Friedkin's deepest understanding of courage.

Courage is not the absence of weakness.

It is the quiet decision that another person's need matters more than our own fear.

By the time the exorcism reaches its conclusion, Friedkin has quietly shown us four different responses to suffering.

Father Dyer remains beside his grieving friend.

Chris refuses to abandon her daughter.

Karras answers despite doubt.

Merrin answers despite weakness.

None of them eliminate suffering.

None of them fully understand it.

None of them are spared by it.

Yet each refuses to let another person endure it alone.

That is what I find so enduring about The Exorcist. For all its unforgettable images of spinning heads, blasphemy, and demonic possession, the film ultimately remembers something much quieter.

Evil may be extraordinary.

Responsibility is almost always ordinary.

It is through those ordinary acts of compassion, fidelity, and sacrifice that Friedkin reveals something enduring about what it means to be human. The demon may command our attention, but it never earns the film's deepest admiration. That belongs instead to the people who continue answering another person's suffering, even when they cannot fully understand it, explain it, or overcome it.

Watching The Exorcist today, I no longer believe its lasting power comes from its ability to frighten audiences. Horror films have become louder, bloodier, and more technically sophisticated. Friedkin's film endures because it understands something far more enduring than fear.

Suffering will always exist.

Grief will always exist.

Doubt will always exist.

So, too, will opportunities to answer another person's suffering.

Friedkin never promises that evil can always be defeated. Instead, he offers something both humbler and more demanding: our humanity is revealed by how we respond when another person's suffering asks something of us.

The film's final image belongs not to Father Karras, but to Father Dyer.

He stands alone at the top of the Georgetown steps, looking down toward the place where his friend gave his life only moments before. His expression is contemplative, but impossible to fully read. Friedkin refuses to tell us what Dyer is thinking.

Instead, he leaves us with the silence.

Karras has made his choice.

Merrin has made his choice.

Chris has made hers.

Now the question belongs to Dyer.

And quietly...

to us.

Editor's Reflection

What continues to move me about The Exorcist is not its supernatural spectacle, but its extraordinary confidence in the quiet moments between people. Friedkin understood that horror means very little if we do not first believe in the humanity of those experiencing it.

Fear eventually fades.

Shock eventually fades.

Yet the quiet moments remain.

A friend refusing to leave another alone in grief.

An exhausted priest answering a desperate mother's question.

An aging man walking toward a battle he may not survive.

A mother refusing to leave her daughter's side.

Perhaps that is why The Exorcist continues to endure.