Hello Beautiful People! Welcome to the first-ever Baddie Book Review!
*Some disclaimers/ warnings for future readers*
– Contains lots of demons, devils, bad spirits, Jesus no-no stuff
– Contains a hilarious amount of swear words, and crass language, most of which come from an 11-year-old girl
– Contains some disturbing sexual content
I have been wanting to read this book for a very long time and I am so happy I’ve finally got the chance to read it.
Band of Characters:
- Chris MacNeil: Mother dearest
- Regan MacNeil: Lil lady who has major demons
- Willie and Karl: Swiss couple who works for the MacNeil’s
- Sharon Spencer: Regan’s tutor and the secretary
- Father Karras: Interesting dude who obsessively helps the MacNeil’s
- Burke Denning’s: A nasty drunk
- Detective Kinderman: The one character who pissed me the hell off
- Father Merrin: Lead demon slayer
My rating: 8/10
The Exorcist starts off with an intro to Father Merrin, and I will say this prologue went right over my head. I didn’t even realize that the guy at the start was the same as the guy who showed up at the end until a while after I finished.
We get some intro to Chris MacNeil and her daughter Regan. Chris is a famous actress and the two are living in a house in Georgetown while she shoots her film. Look I will say I didn’t really take much of a liking to Regan. She kind of seemed like a brat to me, but I am also not the best with kids so I may not be the best to judge. Chris also seemed a bit high on her horse for me at the start but I really started to like her as I got into the book.
Regan and Chris play with this Ouija board in the house and summon the ghost of a guy named Captain Howdy. Chris catches Regan playing with it alone and Regan is talking to this Captain Howdy guy which is just weird.
Eventually, some weird things start happening, such as things getting moved in the house, Chris hearing weird noises, and temperature changes. Then Regan starts claiming that her bed is shaking and all sorts of other weird things. Chris is having a dinner party one night with all these fancy people and Regan walks into the room, pops a squat on the carpet and pees on the floor. I thought this part was so funny because only two characters were instantly weirded out and were like ‘Let’s gtfo’ and everyone else just took Chris’s explanation that she was sick and went with it.
Regan gradually gets worse and starts being violent towards others and herself and just doing a lot of weird shit. Chris starts taking her to doctors and all of them essentially say they don’t know what is wrong but provide Chris with a shit ton of drugs to knock her out with. I thought it was so interesting how casual the doctors were about Regan, like only one acted up and it was only because she grabbed him by the balls… literally. The things that came out of this little girl’s mouth were insane, and everyone was like ‘Oh she’s compensating for the divorce’ (Oh yeah Chris and Regan’s dad are separated and he seems to never see the kid) and acting like this is the usual stuff kids do to compensate. I have heard some absolutely wild things come from kids’ mouths but never anything like that.
Okay, so the movie Chris is working on has some drunk bigoted director running it named Burke Dennings. He’s fairly unfiltered and just seems to enjoy upsetting people. He randomly shows up at Chris’s home often and ends up showing up there when Chris isn’t home. Sharon Chris secretary and tutor leaves Denning’s with Regan so she can go get some more meds and whatnot. When Chris and Sharon get back to the house Denning’s is dead on the sidewalk with his head turned the wrong way. Again everyone was so damn casual with this. Originally no one knew his head was turned around they thought he just tripped and fell and died, but still everyone was like ‘sucks to suck’ and moved on. Detective Kinderman comes to talk to her about Denning’s, gets suspicious of Chris’s housekeeper Karl, and takes a sample from a bird sculpture Regan made for Chris.
I will say something that threw me off about Chris was how she was during the process of figuring out what was wrong with Regan. She’s very mama bear and is constantly doing what she needs to do for Regan. However, when the topic came up to put Regan in an institution for professional help she was super against it. She battled hard for her to get psychiatric help, but when it came to a larger scale she didn’t seem into it. I felt like the main reason she was against it was because of Regan’s dad. She didn’t want to have to tell him what exactly was going on and how bad things were because it didn’t seem like she ever pulled him into the loop about Regan. All in all the doctors come up with nothing and one doctor suggests to Chris to talk to a Priest.
Father Karras is a hottie priest (they described him to look like a boxer so he’s gotta be a hottie no?) who is also a psychiatrist. The church he works from has been recently desecrated in different ways. A detective comes to chat with him regarding the desecrations and some other things. Look now I feel like the role of Detective Kinderman was supposed to be to annoy, but man he pissed me off. I would be reading and thinking to myself ‘come on man GET ON WITH IT’ only to see most other characters felt the same way. He was just bumbling constantly and I don’t know why it just got to me. Kinderman talks to Karras about Dennings and asks a lot of questions regarding his head.
Okay, so you know how I said Kinderman was suspicious of Karl Chris’s housekeeper? He follows Karl and finds out that Karl has been lying to his wife Willie about their daughter. Willie thinks their daughter is dead but really she’s a drug addict and Karl brings her money to stay quiet and away. Eventually, Willie does find out and I honestly was kind of curious about the reason behind this mini subplot. It gave Karl an alibi as to why he didn’t kill Dennings (was visiting his daughter when he died) but Blatty could have done something easier to explain this away. I feel like it’s a representation that you don’t have to have physical bad spirits in your body in order to have ‘demons’. Kinderman no longer has Willie as a suspect and it’s revealed that…
***WEE WOO WEE WOO SPOILER ALERT***
The paint found on a desecrated Mary statue at Father Karras church, matches the paint used to paint Regan’s bird statue to Chris.
Now you may have the same questions I had. How does a very drugged-out little girl who is strapped to a bed, go to a church and get funky with the decoration? There were lots of recommendations in the book that Regan could get out of her restraints and fight the medication when she wanted to. Kinderman thought he saw her in the window one day when Chris said she was asleep (they had just drugged her out), and Karras thought he saw a little girl figure in the church late at night. I don’t know if I totally believe it was Regan doing it. Realistically I see the suggestion for it being her all being there but I don’t see how she would have left the house in the night to do this. I mean look I don’t have a suggestion for who else it could be but I am just not sure about it.
Karras meets Regan and Chris, and Regan is wild towards him, so he agrees to gather evidence to send to the church to ask for an exorcism. During the time he spends with her, she talks to him about his mother. Karras before meeting Chris and Regan had a guilty concise because his mother died in her apartment and no one noticed for many weeks. I thought this was interesting to his story because it seems like his mother dying was breaking his faith. She sold her body when he was a kid to buy them food, and he left her to die alone in her old age. I thought it was interesting because I think it was Blatty’s way of showing that even the people whose life mission is to be good people aren’t always the best people, also touching again on how you don’t have to have bad spirits in your body in order to have demons. I don’t think that what happened with Karras mother makes him a bad guy but realistically with who he is, you would expect him to care for her in her old age.
Eventually, Karras has now gathered enough evidence for the church to give him the thumbs up to do an exorcism, and they send him the big daddy in demon slaying Father Merrin to assist. I said this earlier on but Father Merrin is brought up at the very start of the book. He’s in Iraq doing some archeological dig and finds some statues. It’s a statue I am guessing that represents the demon that’s in Regan. Due to my lil brain not being able to remember things so far apart I didn’t even make this connection until I went back to look in the book for this post. He recognized the statue and later said he had met this demon before so he was being told he was going to meet it again. Karras and Merrin spend a lot of time trying to get the demon from Regan and she’s on the brink of death.
The one thing I didn’t love about this book (why it got an 8/10) was the ending. It honestly didn’t feel that satisfying to me. I am not sure what would have but I just hated the way it went.
*** IF YOU DON’T WANT THE ENDING SPOILED DON’T CONTINUE***
Karras goes into Regan’s room a few days after he and Merrin have been working and he finds Merrin dead on her floor. He kinda loses it and starts challenging the demon. He invites the demon to leave Regan and enter him instead. I am not sure if he did this while the demon entered him or after, but Karras throws himself out of Regan’s window. My guess was he did this in an effort to kill the demon with him, but the demon said multiple times while in Regan that when the host dies it doesn’t. I mean the demon could have been lying but if Merrin had met it once before I would be surprised that it wouldn’t just move on to the next live person. This seemingly does work though because everyone rushes to find Karras dead on the sidewalk and Regan is back to normal. I think I was just pissed that Karras died to be honest. I was more attached to him as a character than Merrin so I was kinda bummed.
A few weeks later everything is back to normal and everyone just kinda pretends like it didn’t happen. I felt like Chris was way too casual about the fact that two men just died to save her daughter. I don’t think there’s anything she could do to remedy it or pay them back, but I was like damn girl at least pretend to act a little upset about it. Chris and Regan are leaving the house and Detective Kinderman shows up before they leave. He essentially tells Chris that he knows that Regan desecrated the church, and killed Dennings, and the Priests, but he isn’t going to do anything about it. While I do think this was very chill of him, I was also like well damn so everyone’s just saying forget and move on. I am not sure why I just wanted someone to acknowledge that it was not okay that this kid had done all this stuff, but no one really did.
Chris and Regan leave and there’s this little bit about Regan looking hauntedly out the window of the car as it leaves, and I wasn’t sure if that was insinuating that Karras never got the demon out, or that there never really was one to start as she was just the lil demon all along.
I can absolutely see why this book is a beloved classic. It’s absolutely wild from start to finish, and the way that Blatty tells the story is unique and helps keep the story flowing so there’s always something interesting going on or new things to pick up. If you love horror and haven’t read this one yet I highly recommend it. While I do love horror movies I will say I have actually never watched the movie version of the book so I don’t know how the two compare.
I hope you have enjoyed reading and I would love to hear from you in the comments. If you have any good recommendations for books to check out leave them in the comments or reach out on Instagram @baddiebookreviews
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