I chose THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE because it's a film that I return to again and again. It's really well cast. It's a procedural, it's a legal drama, and it's a horror movie. It has a strong female protagonist in Laura Linney's character and an unhinged performance by Jennifer Carpenter in the central role of Emily Rose. And I think it's an interesting story in that it's about transformation and redemption for both of those characters.

But at the end of the day, who wins? Who loses? Who knows? I think it's a good selection to use to talk about the idea of “based on a true story,” and this is a little different from THE STRANGERS and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, both of which made liberal use of that statement, because this film is inspired by the real life and death of Anneliese Michel, a 24 year-old German woman who underwent 67 Catholic exorcisms in the year before her death from malnutrition. She weighed 66 pounds at the time of her death. She was unable to move on her own. She'd contracted pneumonia. She had two broken knees from continuous genuflection, and her parents and parish priest were convicted of negligent homicide. She injured herself, she drank her own urine, and she ate bugs.

It's also worth noting that THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE is not the only adaptation that this true story inspired. The Germans themselves made a film in 2006 called REQUIEM. And there's a straight to video flick from 2011 called ANNELIESE: THE EXORCIST TAPES. Today, the grave of Anneliese is a pilgrimage site. In 2013, the house she lived in burned down. But I believe that was arson and not demons. Important caveat. And you can hear about 19 minutes of the actual recordings of Anneliese's exorcism on YouTube with subtitles, in case in case you don't speak German, or Aramaic, as the case may be. They obviously informed Jennifer Carpenter's performance and that guttural quality of her speech. It's also interesting to note that the voice on these authentic recordings sounds exactly like what we've come to expect from the possessed people we meet — like Mercedes McCambridge in THE EXORCIST.

Listen to our episode on THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE here.

Bradford Louryk