The Exorcist · reception & legacy

How The Exorcist has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

In 1973 it was a full-blown phenomenon — blocks-long lines, reports of fainting and walkouts, and a then-shocking 10 Oscar nominations for a horror film — even as critics like Pauline Kael dismissed it. Half a century on it's settled comfortably into 'scariest film ever made' shorthand, the rare zeitgeist smash whose reputation never actually dipped.

What's debated

The perennial fight: is it still genuinely terrifying or a relic you had to see in '73 — with a side debate over whether it's really a horror film at all or a drama about faith that happens to be scary.

Its footprint

The spinning head, the pea-soup vomit, Tubular Bells, and 'The power of Christ compels you!' are all permanent cultural furniture, parodied everywhere from Scary Movie 2 to The Simpsons — the priest-under-the-streetlamp poster shot alone is one of horror's most imitated images.

Where it stands

An immovable pillar of the horror canon — the 'you must have seen this' entry that every scariest-films list has to either crown or conspicuously dethrone.

Named by the director

Influences William Friedkin has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

• Ordet (1955) — Friedkin repeatedly cited Dreyer's film as a touchstone for treating the miraculous and supernatural with sober, matter-of-fact realism.