I watched Exorcist: The Beginning last night (well, to be precise it was between about 12:30 AM to 2:30 AM this morning) on CD.

The film details the first encounter of Father Lancaster Merrin (Stellan Skarsgåard with the demon Pazuzu in East Africa, in 1949.  After a disturbing experience in WW2, Merrin has lost his faith and now pursues archaeology.  While in Cairo, he is asked to investigate a strange discovery in Kenya — a church, apparently built circa 5 A.D., buried underground.  He arrives there only to find that some mysterious evil is slowly getting stronger over there.  Of course, we are in the know about the identity of the evil — it is the demon Pazuzu, which Father Merrin would again encounter in The Exorcist.  The movie also stars Izabella Scorupco as Sarah, a doctor working at the excavation site.

As a prequel to a horror classic, I thought this movie was very well done.  The acting is good and the photography by Vittorio Storaro is beautiful.  There is a good amount of scares and a general sense of uneasiness that pervades this movie, which I thought was a big plus point.  While the story is interesting, there are are probably some flaws you will discover in retrospect (as in where did Joseph the boy fit into everything?).  Overall though, I liked the movie and it is probably comparable to the well-made sequel The Exorcist III: Legion (I haven't seen the second movie, which is supposed to be quite bad).

The film's director is Renny Harlin, who earlier made the bonafide action classics Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, and a couple of lesser movies (by that, I am specifically referring to Deep Blue Sea!).  I thought this movie was well done too, and the director was able to craft some very memorable scenes.  A completely different version of the film was supposed to have been made by Paul Schrader, before the studio threw it out for not being gory enough!  When Harlin took over the project, there were significant changes made to the script.  Anyway, I hope I get to see the other version also sometime in the future!