The devil may be in the details, but the real horror is in the human experience.

When The Exorcist was unleashed upon the public in 1973, it wasn’t just a film—it was a cultural event that shattered the boundary between screen and reality, leaving a trail of controversy, fainting spells, and mass hysteria in its wake that preceded its arrival across the Atlantic in 1974. Directed by William Friedkin and adapted from William Peter Blatty’s novel, The Exorcist dared to plunge into the darkest depths of faith, evil, and human vulnerability. At the time of its release, the mere idea of a possessed young girl was horrifying enough, but what made The Exorcist seismic was the film’s unflinching, graphic representation of that concept. Audiences had never seen anything like it. Priests were called to screenings to “cleanse” cinemas; cities imposed bans; and people walked (or were carried) out in horror, sick bags in hand.

From the opening notes of Tubular Bells to the haunting visage of young Regan MacNeil (played by Linda Blair) writhing under demonic possession, The Exorcist was an exercise in boundary-pushing filmmaking. Audiences weren’t used to seeing the desecration of innocence in such visceral, almost sacrilegious terms. Here was a 12-year-old girl, not only subjected to the usual cinematic torments of a ghost story, but physically and mentally violated by an unseen force, taunting and defiling her mind, body, and soul. It was a new level of fear, a kind that transcended the typical jump-scare horror tropes of its time. Friedkin used special effects, makeup, and sound design to show the spiritual warfare that wasn’t just taking place within Regan, but within the broader American psyche, raising profound questions about faith, morality, and evil.

The controversy that followed the release wasn’t just about the on-screen horrors. It was a battle between spiritual conservatism and the rising tide of secular culture. The devout were appalled; the secular world, already rattled by war, civil unrest, and political scandal, was equally disturbed by the film’s implications: if evil could take root in the heart of an innocent child, then where were we safe? The church’s official response was both wary and intrigued, with some seeing it as a reflection of real spiritual warfare and others condemning it as blasphemous.

Despite – or more probably because of – its controversy, The Exorcist became a box office sensation, cementing its place as a genre-defining horror film. But like the devil it portrayed, time has a way of playing tricks. What once had audiences fleeing theatres has now, for many modern viewers, become a strangely nostalgic relic. Horror, as a genre, has shifted. We’ve seen unimaginable gore, existential terrors, found footage, and psychological assaults. Compared to films like Hereditary or The Conjuring, The Exorcist can feel slower, less kinetic, and—dare I say it—tame.

The film’s effects, which were groundbreaking at the time, have inevitably aged. The head-spinning, pea-soup vomiting, and levitation scenes, while still impressive from a technical standpoint, no longer possess the same bone-chilling shock they once had and are even the subject of pop-culture lampoonery right up to the direct spoofing in Repossessed. The meticulous sound design, including the infamous use of subliminal recordings and eerie silence, now plays as a basic horror filmmaking rather than an unprecedented assault on the senses. And yet, beneath the dated veneer of 1970s filmmaking, there’s something about The Exorcist that still endures—a horror that transcends spinning heads and demonic voices. It’s not the Devil that scares us anymore; it’s the raw, gut-wrenching fear of helplessness in the face of something you can’t understand.

Strip away the emetic pea-soupery, the levitating beds, and the blasphemous dialogue, and what remains is a very real, very current human terror—the kind that any parent can relate to. At its core, The Exorcist is about a mother, Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), who watches in desperation as her child’s health and sanity deteriorates, slipping further and further away from her grasp. In today’s world of Google diagnoses, conspiracy-laden healthcare crises, and the endless maze of medical bureaucracy, this fear is more relevant than ever.

Chris’s journey, from doctor to doctor, undergoing test after test, is arguably more harrowing now than it was in the early seventies. Even in an age of advanced medicine, the terror of a loved one succumbing to an unexplained illness resonates. The medical establishment, despite its clinical detachment, offers no real answers, leaving Chris to confront the incomprehensible—her daughter’s condition is not medical, it’s something far worse – the unknown.

This resonates in a world where institutions – both medical and ecumenical, once seen as bastions of knowledge and safety, now seem vulnerable, fallible, and, at times, powerless to confront their own evil within let alone help others with theirs. The demon that possesses Regan may not be as terrifying to modern audiences as it was back then, but the fear of losing a child to something that can’t be diagnosed, cured, or even understood remains as potent as ever. The real-life horror isn’t found in the bedroom battles with Pazuzu, but in the quiet moments when Chris realises she can’t save her daughter through any earthly means.

So, does The Exorcist still matter in a post-2010 world of elevated horror and endless remakes? Absolutely. Its legacy is cemented not just by its ability to shock audiences, but by its willingness to explore the fundamental battle between good and evil, sanity and madness, faith and scepticism. It’s a film that, at its heart, is about belief—about believing in something beyond ourselves when the world around us starts to crumble.

While modern audiences may not react with the same physical revulsion as those in the 1970s, The Exorcist still has the power to unsettle because it taps into that primal fear: the fear of losing control, the fear of helplessness, and the fear of evil that can’t be explained away and most fundamental of all: the fear of losing a child.