Montage
The film opens showing the outside of the MacNeil home in an affluent section of Georgetown; then, a statue of the Virgin Mary inside of a chapel.
Prologue
An army of workers dig away at an archeological site in Northern Iraq. Boy delivers message to Father Merlin, a senior Catholic priest. Diggers have found small artifacts at the base of the mountain: lamps, arrowheads, and a coin. Merlin goes to the site and there he reaches into a small hole and pulls out the head of a demon called Pazuzu.
Merrin stops to sit a moment at a market to take his heart medicine. Walking through the market, he sees 3 blacksmiths beating metal on an anvil; of them has 1 eye. Later, Merrin and an assistant go over their finding that include a coin and the head of Pazuzu. “Evil against evil,” his assistant says regarding Pazuzu. Then, the clock on the wall stops. Merlin says goodbye to his assistant. Walking through the village, he barely avoids being ran over by a carriage; its rider laughs as she goes by.
He stops at a ruin where there is a life-sized statue of the demon Pazuzu on a mound overlooking 2 dogs fighting each other. Merlin stands on the opposite mound to face Pazuzu.
Georgetown
Actress Chris MacNeil is in bed annotating her lines in a script. She hears a loud noise in the attic and checks her daughter’s room. Reagan is asleep but her window is wide open.
Chris greets a female servant in the kitchen. She tells the male servant, Karl, to put rat traps in attic.
Movie set of “Crash Course”
Chris argues with director Burke Dennings about something in the script. He says something funny and they hug. She makes brief eye contact with priest Damien Karras who’s among the spectators. Cameras roll and she grabs a bullhorn, enters the scene, and does her part. Karras leaves. Later, Chris walks home. Kids are out in Halloween costumes. The gate of Saint MIke's parish is open and she catches a glimpse of Karras (psychiatric counselor) as she walks by.
At home, her daughter Regan tells her about a horse she’d seen earlier. She asks Chris to get her a horse for her birthday. They play and Chris wrestles Regan to the floor.
Karras in subway waiting for a train. A homeless man asks him for some money claiming to have once been an altar boy. Karras walks down the street in rundown New York City neighborhood and enters one of the apartment buildings to see his mother who is happy to see him. He wraps fresh gauze around her injured leg and asks her if she wants to be put in a home. An adamant no is her answer. He lights a cigarette and she asks him what’s the matter and he says “nothing,” but she can tell that something is bothering him.
The MacNeil home
In the basement, Regan shows Chris her Ouija board. Chris wants to play but Captain Howdy, Regan’s imaginary friend, doesn’t want to play with Chris. Later, Chris puts Regan to bed and asks her what she wants for her birthday. Regan tells Chris that she can invite Burke Dennings to her part. She asks Chris if she feels the same way about Burke as she feels about her father whom Chris is separated from. Chris says that she and Burke are only friends.
Karras and Tom, a fellow priest, are in a bar having a drink. Karras feels bad about leaving his mom alone in New York. Tom suggests a transfer to a New York Parish but Karras has lost faith in God and simply wants out.
The MacNeil home
It’s Regan’s birthday and Chris is on phone and yelling at the operator who is unable to reach Regan’s father who is in Rome and has not called to wish his daughter happy birthday.
Chris in bed and receives a call from someone on the movie set. Regan is in bed with her claiming that she can’t get any sleep in her own room because her bed is shaking. Chris hears a noise in attic and goes there to find Karl who tells her that there are no rats.
Saint Michael’s Parish
Priest carries 2 flower pots to the chapel and finds the statue of virgin Mary defiled by vandals.
Regan is at the hospital being put through a series of tests. A demon’s face flashes through her mind. Her behavior towards the staff is violent and bizarre. Afterwards, the Dr. tells Chris that Regan has a nervous disorder and writes her a prescription for Ritalin. She might be depressed over her parent’s separation. Doctor says that Regan told him to keep his hand off her goddamn cunt. Chris is stunned; Regan never cursed.
Karras and his mother’s brother visit her at the hospital where she is being treated for dementia.
His uncle condemns him for joining the priesthood instead of becoming a lawyer where he could put his mother in a decent home instead of a dump. Ill patients clutch Karras’ robe but he tears himself loose and takes off his collar. His mother looks up from her bed and asks him why he put her in the hospital.
In a gym, Karras works off his frustration on a heavy bag.
The MacNeil home
Chris hosts a party and Burke is sloppy drunk and making vulgar comments. He spots Chris’ servant Karl and follows him around berating him for the Holocaust (Karl is German).
Chris asks Father Dyer about Karras who discovered yesterday that his mother had passed away. Burke call Karl a Nazi and Karl chokes him. Sharon and Chris intervene and Burke asks her what’s for dessert. Chris checks in on Regan who is in bed pretending to be asleep. Burke leaves.
Everybody gathers around Father Dyer who is singing and playing the piano. Regan interrupts the party. “You’re all gonna die up there,” she says and pisses on herself.
Chris gives Regan a bath. Regan tells her that she doesn’t know why she said that at the party.
Chris puts Regan to bed and tells her that it’s just nerves and to take the pills like the doctor said. Chris is going downstairs and hears a loud noise from Regan’s room. She rushes back to the room to witness Regan’s bed shaking off the floor.
Saint Michael’s Parish
Dyer visits Karras who’s in his room at the parish wallowing in guilt over his mother. He should have been there for her. Dyer pours him a drink and puts him to bed.
Karras’ dream: montage
- A falling coin
- A rabid dog foaming at the mouth
- The stopped pendulum of a clock
- His mother going down the subway
- The face of a demon
Hospital
Chris and hospital staff struggle with Regan to give her a shot.
Church
Karras in chapel leading a prayer
At the hospital, Doctor tells Chris he believes that Regan has a disturbance in chemical electrical activity of her brain. Chris tells him about shaking bed and he scoffs, telling her that the problem is Regan’s head and not the bed. He believes she has a scar (lesion) on the temporal lobe.
Regan undergoes an EEG, an arteriogram, and an x-ray procedure of her spinal cord. The x-rays, however, are negative showing no obvious abnormalities.
The MacNeil home
Chris calls the doctors to her home. There, the doctors are stunned when they see Regan rising and falling on bed. She strikes one of the doctors hard, knocking him to the floor, then raises up her gown and says to him, “fuck me.”
They give her a shot to put her to sleep.
The doctors talk to Chris outside the room. She wants to know how Regan could fly off the bed and the doctors gives her their scientific interpretation, calling it “abnormal strength accelerated motor performance induced by abnormal mental states.” They tell her that they need to do a pneumoencephalogram to pin down the lesion which will involve another spinal.
The x-rays turn up negative. The doctor asks Chris if she keeps drugs in the house and she tells him that she doesn’t even smoke grass. He wants her to start looking for a psychiatrist.
Chris arrives home from seeing the doctor. The telephone rings but no one answers her. Regan’s bedroom window is wide open. When Sharon walks in the house, Chris shouts at her for leaving Regan by herself. Sharon left Burt to watch her while she ran out to get the thorazine. They are interrupted by a friend named Chuck who tells them that Burke had fallen down the steps outside and had broken his neck.
A psychiatrist hypnotizes Regan and asks her who is inside of her. She says it’s Captain Howdy sometimes. He, then, speaks to the person inside of Regan. She growls and attacks him.
Karras is at the school track running laps. Lieutenant Kinderman is sitting in the stands reading a newspaper. When Karras finishes, Kinderman questions him about Burke Dennings’ death and what he knows about witchcraft; he’d read a psychiatric paper Karras wrote on the subject. Kinderman shares the details of Burke’s death with Karras—Burke was found at the bottom of the steps with his head turned around facing backwards. Kinderman believes the desecration of the Virgin Mary in the parish was done by the same person who killed Burke Dennings. Karras is tight-lipped and Kinderman tells Karras that a priest was once locked up for not cooperating with the police in an investigation. Karras isn’t rattled. Kinderman asks if any priests fit the description of Burke Dennings’ killer but Karras walks away.
Hospital
Chris and a team of doctors meet in a conference room. They are baffled by Regan’s behavior and recommend that she contact a priest to perform an exorcism on her daughter. Their reasoning is that Regan’s belief that she is possessed would also make her believe in the exorcism’s power to cure her.
Chris takes Regan home. Kinderman is at the bottom of the steps outside Regan’s bedroom window looking for clues to Burke Denning’s death. He finds a small clay figure of Pazuzu’s head that Regan made.
Chris finds a crucifix under Regan’s pillow and asks Sharon and the servants, Willie and her husband Karl who put it there but no one takes responsibility for it. Chris answers the front door and it is Kinderman wanting to interview her about Burke Denning’s death. He believes that a very powerful man Killed Dennings and threw him out of Regan’s window.
She makes him a cup of coffee and he asks her for an autograph. Then, she shows him to the door. He will come back to interview Regan when she is feeling better.
Chris hears a loud noise and rushes up the steps to Regan’s room where the girl is on the bed stabbing the crucifix into her private parts. She strikes Chris with a hard blow knocking her to the floor. Regan’s head twists around facing backwards and she says to Chris in Dennings’ voice: “Do you know what your daughter did?”
Chris and Karras meet in a park and she asks him how to go about getting an exorcism.
He tells her that it doesn’t happen anymore since they learned about mental illnesses like paranoia and schizophrenia—all the things Harvard taught him. Chris breaks down and tells him that her daughter is possessed. He agrees to see Regan but only as a psychiatrist.
The MacNeil home
Chris and Karras enter Regan’s room. Her wrists are tied to the bedposts to keep her from doing further harm to her face. He introduces himself and she introduces herself as the Devil. Then she asks him to undo the straps but Karras asks her to prove she’s the Devil and make them disappear. She refuses on the grounds that doing so would be too vulgar. She mimics the homeless man Karras saw in the subway, asking if he could help an old altar boy.
She tells Karras that his deceased mother is with them. Karras smiles and asks her to tell him his mother’s maiden name. She frowns and throws up in his face.
Karras and Chris are in basement. She washed his shirt and is ironing it. He tells her that he can’t do exorcism and urges her to put Regan in a good hospital. She walks him out but before leaving he asks her if Regan knew his mother died; she didn’t. Kinderman is in his car across the street and sees Karras leaving the MacNeil home. He also sees someone’s shadow in the window of Reagan’s room.
Kara in chapel performing Holy Sacrament
The MacNeil home
Karras visits Regan. While his back is turned, the drawer pops out of the table by the bed.
He asks her to do it again but she refuses to do so. He brings out a small bottle of Holy water and sprinkles it on her. She starts squirming and hissing. Different voices issue out of her including that of his dead mother. He turns on his tape recorder.
Later, he tells Chris that he sprinkled fake Holy water on Regan and she reacted as though it were real. Chris tells him that Regan killed Burke Dennings.
Karras takes tapes of Regan to a sound lab. The gibberish on the tape is English in reverse. Karras gets a call from Sharon to come by the house quickly. There, Sharon raises Reagans’ nightgown to expose the words “help me” written on her stomach.
The bishop gives permission to do the exorcism and assign the elder priest Lancaster Merrin to assist him. Merrin performed an exorcism a decade earlier that almost killed him.
A cab drops Merrin off at the MacNeil home and Chris lets him inside. He and Karras greet each other and Merlin sends him to the local parish to get some things for him.
The priests prepare for the ritual and Merlin warns Karras not to listen to the Demon who will attack them by mixing lies with truth. Karras describes the many personalities the girl has manifested but Merrin cuts him off: “There’s only 1.”
They go to Regan’s room and the demon hits the old man in his eye with a lump of vomit. He remains calm and they begin the exorcism. Demon curses them, then begins growling like a dog. The bed shakes pounds the floor. Merlin flings Holy water at the Demon.
Karras looks stunned when the bed starts rocking like a boat. Then, all 4 legs of the bed rise 4 feet off the floor and hovers a few minutes before dropping back down. The face of the demon appears and then vanishes. A serpent tongue flickers out at Karras. He goes into shock and Merrin sends him to clean her vomit off his stole. The Devil is aware of Merrin’s bad heart and attacks him, slamming the shutters and pounding the walls. Merrin recovers and the Demon recoils, spinning its head completely around, then turns its attention on Karras, accusing him of leaving his mother. Karras withers.
Suddenly, the Devil falls back, rolls its eyes, and rises off the bed. Merlin sprinkles Holy water on it. After a few minutes, it lowers back onto the mattress. The room shakes and for a moment, Pazuzu appears.
The priests climb to their feet and pick up and continue the exorcism. Regan falls silent and the priests take a breather so that Merrin can go to the bathroom to take his heart medicine. Karras reenters the room and sees his mother sitting on the bed. Then she vanishes and the Demon moos like a cow.
Karras checks its heart as it speaks to him as his mother asking him why he abandoned her. He breaks down and Merrin sends him out of the room. Merlin sprinkles Holy water on the demon. Then he kneels by the bed and holds the creature’s.
Downstairs, Karras rests on a small couch. Chris asks him if Regan will live. He looks at her, says yes, and returns to Regans’ room. The doorbell rings and Chris answers it. It’s Lieutenant Kinderman.
Karras finds Merrin dead on the floor beside Regan’s bed. Karras throws the demon to the floor and the demon leaves Regan and goes into him. He jumps out of the window and lands at bottom of the stairs.
Father Dyer prays over Karras’ body.
Chris moves out of house. Regan kisses Father Dyer goodbye. Chris gives him Karras’ necklace but he gives it back to her. They drive away. The window of Regan’s room is boarded up.
Lieutenant Kinderman comes by and asks about Regan. He takes Dyer to Lunch. The end.
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