The Haunted Boy: The Secret Diary of the Exorcist

I saw this movie earlier tonight (10/21/2010) at its world premiere in the Tivoli Theater in St. Louis, MO.

It was very disappointing.

Touted as a docudrama exploring the true history of the events that inspired William Blatty's 1971 book/1974 movie "The Exorcist", instead the audience was subjected to 90 minutes of the random meandering nonsense that happens when wannabe ghost hunters are given a camera and a budget.

Divining rods... ouija boards... evps... ambiguous shadowy figures... digitally blurred faces speaking in electronically disguised voices... embarrassingly lame re-creations... erratic timelines... tiring repetitions... irrelevant sidetracks... an aggressively bad soundtrack... sigh...

Viewers hoping for an illuminating exposé will have to settle for an incredibly frustrating lack of substance. This movie offered no coherent facts or details that would lead to a clearer understanding of what actually happened to this boy, who was involved, why, and what they actually did.

I left the movie confused and knowing scarcely more about this case than I did when I arrived.

Stylistically, you can file this effort under "We have After Effects are we are NOT afraid to use it!" Yeah, there is a lot of eye candy. Lots of spooky sound effects and quick cuts and cool transitions. Lots of WHOOM and WHOOSH and FLASH.

But none of it makes any sense. The Booth brothers have ZERO notion as to how to assemble their materials into a comprehensible, linear narrative.

You'll see lots of talking heads, but the people interviewed are never allowed to say more than a line or two at a time -- because the film-makers presume that the audience has an attention span of three seconds. Consequently, we have no idea what the interview subjects are even talking about.

We never know what year is under discussion. We have no idea as to who the main players are or how the events relate to each other.

For example, the film-makers include many shots of modern-day people playing with ouija boards. But how does this relate to the events in Georgetown in the 1940s? We are frequently allowed to hear "real" exorcism sounds. The audience is led to believe that this audio comes from the Georgetown case. But it doesn't.

I've read a great deal about this real-life case, yet even I had little idea as to what was going on in this movie. This so-called "documentary" devolves into such incomprehensible gobbledegook that I had to stop watching after about half an hour.

Booth brothers, heed my advice: Take the After Effects OFF your system. Just get rid of it. Learn how to tell a story without it. Learn how to use straight cuts and classic dissolves. Learn how to assemble your work in chronological order.

Have some faith in your audience. Just because YOU apparently spend your entire lives hopped up on meth and caffeine doesn't mean that your viewers are as itchy and twitchy as you are.

Ultimately, the audience wants to become engrossed in a narrative. We want to be hooked. We don't want our eyeballs slammed continuously by "cool" images that don't have any relationship with each other.

Also: If you want to be taken seriously, either don't appear on camera or cultivate a different look. You guys look like a couple of pimps from El Paso.

Happy to find it on RED BOX, Hoped to watch a very scary movie.........was a documentary. OK Nothing against documentaries but anyway , What is this?!? E V E R Y T H I N G seems UNREAL..... is like knowing all the time that everything wasn't truth, even if maybe it was!! interviews, documents pictures, records, people..... ForGdSk. Needs more to be spooky/scary is not enough with just metallic sounds, screams, and dark backgrounds stages...... Could be scary if done 5 decades ago. And then, why on earth those "MATRIX film" letters??? Omg and that DVD menu?!? A disaster, needs to be exorcised. No, no, I ... need an exorcist right now because of how I feel watching this

Poor us, exorcisms lovers.. Disappointed 101%

This is a documentary that dives right into the most infamous demonic case of our generation .... the 1949 St. Louis Exorcism which was partially the basis (along with the 1928 Iowa Exorcism) for the movie "The Exorcist".

However, in this movie you learn more about the "truths" of the 1949 St. Louis case and of the real hero Father Bowdern (the assigned exorcist) in the epic battle of good vs. evil. This was a real case documented by the Catholic Church itself.

This documentary brilliantly and artistically brings many hidden truths concerning this case to life and it is done superbly in a way that the new generation can understand and relate to.

In this documentary you get to learn about the real character of the assigned exorcist, Father William Bowdern, from his niece. You also learn of never before locations involved in this infamous case and get to witness firsthand the paranormal exploration of such. You actually get to go inside the bedroom of the actual house where it all started and where the Devil slept in 1949. You even get to hear accounts from actual close family and friends of the boy who was possessed in 1949 and even get facts about the furniture from the hospital room where the demons were cast out, why is it still in cold storage today? This is a must see film for any fan of The Exorcist, paranormal enthusiast, horror buff, those local to the St. Louis area and everyone who wishes the historical aspects of not just this specific case, but possessions and exorcisms in general. The demonologist interviewed in this movie was Dr. William Bradshaw one of the last true degreed demonologist left in the world who received his Masters from Yale and Doctorate from St. Andrews University in Scotland. When you are done watching this movie you feel like you have gained a wealth of knowledge within several areas. It will leave you wanting to watch it again!

I'm giving this a 3 only because the subject and interviews were very interesting. The Booth brothers have absolutely no idea how to put together a documentary though. They jump all over the place, include things that are loosely related at best, like the AmittyVille case. Also they need to remember that people who watch documentaries normally know what they are looking at. You can't show a crime scene from the Defeo family murders and try to pass it off as a crime scene photo from another case.

I really wish they would have spent more time on what the diary said and less on their "did you hear that" ghost hunting crap. Not to mention this is about the Haunted Boy, yet they spend a good chunk of the "documentary" on clips of their investigations into other cases.

All in all, the subject is very interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing a decently done documentary on it.