Exorcist: The Beginning

Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) is Renny Harlin's horror film you can watch online on iFILM. It rewinds the famous story: long before he ever saves Regan, Father Merrin meets the thing he will one day name.

The war has burned the faith out of the priest, so he sheds his collar and goes back to his old trade as an archaeologist. A dig in a remote stretch of East Africa turns up something that should not exist: a Byzantine church, intact and untouched, as if buried the same day it was built. Below it Merrin breaks open an even older crypt. Whatever has waited down there for centuries starts reaching up toward the people above, and the locals begin to die one by one. Stellan Skarsgard leads, with Izabella Scorupco and James D'Arcy alongside him.

The production had a famously rough road, reshot twice by the studio before Harlin's cut reached theaters. Expect grim African atmosphere, the demon Pazuzu, and dread that builds slowly. Stream Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) online on iFILM.