The Exorcist: 40th Anniversary Edition
By: William Peter Blatty / Narrated By: William Peter Blatty, Eliana Shaskan
Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
Grabs you then never lets you go… only kidding! But good.
While The Exorcist definitely is a creep-fest, and it definitely aged well with time, I can’t tell you that the hair at the back of your neck will be standing on end for the almost 13 hours of this audiobook. There’s a LOT of filler, a lot of backstory, a lot of the minor thoughts and actions of each of the main characters, plus diversions into the lives of the side characters.
It starts promisingly enough. Father Merrin, on an archeological dig, finds an amulet carving of the demon Pazuzu—ooooh, scary, right?!? Then: …nothing… We get into the lives of Reagan (think Linda Blair in the movie) and, mostly, her mother and said mother’s acting career. There are Reagan’s changes of habits, mood changes, behavior changes. It takes a while, as most of the book truly is a sleuthing book. Is it a psychological disturbance, or is it… something different? We go through almost 7 hours before a priest is consulted, and by the time he is, Chris, the mother, is DETERMINED she will have an exorcism, no arguments accepted.
So then we go through a few more hours of Father Karras doing some sleuthing of his own. HE asks himself if it’s something else, but for the most part he’s adamant that it’s all psychological (even throaty growling and shrieking and projectile vomit just make him think: hmmm, how extreme…).
Things really start to get rolling for the last hour, hour and a half of the audiobook when Karras thinks that maaaaaaybe they could do an exorcism as a form of auto-suggestion. But it’s a long time coming.
The strength of the audiobook (and we’re talking HUGE strength here) is that William Peter Blatty narrates the book himself, and he’s amazing. He flashes between sniveling Mom, pragmatic Karras, and then barrels into full-fledged demonic possession with no difficulties whatsoever. That man does Pazuzu like nobody’s business. Ya want creepy? The man delivers horrifying.
So as an audiobook, if you want instant and steady fright, you might look elsewhere. But if you want a long book, with well-fleshed out characters, a few twists and turns, horror that’s ever so slooooooowly ramped up until it’s downright freaky, well, here you go. The Exorcist with Blatty bellowing and cursing obscenities delivers like crazy!
Oh, and by the way. The book works best at x1.5 speed. I don’t think it’s bearable at x1… too ponderous, and who wants ponderous horror?!?
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