DEMONS OVER AMERICA

REVIEWED - THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSETHIS strange, worrying film is, the credits assure us, based on a true story. The Exorcism of Emily Rose follows the trial of a priest indicted for the murder of a girl believed to be possessed by the devil.

The tale offers good material for an intriguing meditation on the role of faith in the judicial system. The jury is asked by the defendant's lawyer to accept that demons may exist and, therefore, that the priest's decision to treat a frenzied young girl's symptoms with holy water rather than pharmaceuticals may be justifiable. There is something of the Scopes Monkey trial, in which evolution was put before a jury, about this interestingly knotty conflict.

Director Scott Derrickson has assembled some respectable personnel to help tell his story. Tom Wilkinson brings integrity to the defendant. Laura Linney is equally well cast as an ambitious lawyer, currently bathing in the limelight of a recent triumph, who reluctantly accepts the challenge of defending the troubled cleric.

But the film loads its bases in such a shocking fashion that, rather than a balanced study of complicated issues of faith and jurisprudence, it rapidly takes on the quality of a piece of right-wing Christian propaganda. The flashbacks to Emily Rose's difficulties show her engaging in outrageous physical contortions while spouting lengthy curses in various obscure languages. Demons dressed in black lurk in alleyways. Horses are driven bananas by her very presence.

During the case, Campbell Scott's dry prosecutor - diabolically logical, despite being a Christian - presents some unconvincing medical arguments to explain away these events. But the hysterical music and frenzied weather that accompany the girl's attacks leave us in no doubt as to the film-makers' view of her condition: this is not epilepsy.

Reinforcing the film's suitability for midnight screenings in the red states, the script introduces Linney as a decadent, childless (East Coast-educated, I bet) urban smartypants, who guzzles Martinis in rooftop bars after enabling murderers to walk free. Later she learns to accept the value of faith and replaces the Tanqueray with herbal tea. Meanwhile Emily Rose's family are depicted as decent hardworking people left behind by modernity.

The most outrageous moment arrives in the later stages of the film, when it is suggested, with apparent seriousness, that the dead girl, clearly nuttier than a crate of Snickers, may soon become a saint.

Yes, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a Song of Bernadette for the Culture War years.