Exorcist: The Beginning has quite the interesting story behind it. Two years ago, well respected screenwriter Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver) was hired by Warner Brothers to bring Exorcist: The Beginning to the screen after the project's first director (the legendary John Frankenheimer) passed away. But something odd happened. Schrader went out and shot his film, but when he presented his finished version to Warners, they rejected it on the grounds - reportedly - that it wasn't scary enough. Rather than just dumping the project altogether, the studio called upon Renny Harlin to punch-up the film's fear factor, and as it turned out, Harlin virtually shot an entirely new picture.

Exorcist: The Beginning takes us back to the days following WWII to tell the story of Father Merrin's first encounter with the demonic force Pazuzu. Pazuzu, as you may recall, was the pea soup-spewing parasite who was responsible for the famed "Evil Evictor's dramatic demise in William Friedkin's controversial classic from 1973. Stellan Skarsgard does an excellent job of protraying a younger version of a role made famous by the venerable Max Von Sydow.

The prequel gets off to an interesting start as we learn that Father Merrin as a younger man is a different character than one might expect. Tormented by haunting visions brought about by a tramatic event he was party to during the Holocaust, Merrin has turned his back on the priesthood and is now an accomplished archeologist. He is called to Africa on a dig where a strangely preserved ancient church has been unearthed and before long it becomes apparent that, to get to the bottom of this matter, he'll find it expediant to shake the mothballs out of his faith.

Renny Harlin isn't exactly an A-List director. Quite frankly, he's not even a C-List director. Sure, he's made some entertaining movies (i.e. Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger etc.), but he certainly wouldn't have been my choice for re-igniting The Exorcist franchise. In fact, I don't think he would have been in my top 100 choices. Alas, the powers that be over at Warner Brothers decided to give him a crack at it, and after seeing what Harlin managed to conjure up, you have to wonder what possessed them. Padumpum.

Upon watching this prequel unfold one certainly gains a renewed respect for William Friedkin. It's been 30 years since he created the original - arguably the greatest horror film ever made - and even with all of the advancements with CGI and all the technological wizardry at his disposal, Harlin was unable to create a single scene that contained anything that could touch the disturbing imagery that Friedkin poured all over the screen so many years ago.

Still Harlin does get a few things right. He made sure that Skarsgard stayed on board after Schrader's hands were washed of the project. When Frankenheimer was to make the movie, Liam Neeson was attached, and while that's a potentially interesting casting choice, I really like the way Skarsgard plays Merrin. First of all the facial resemblance is remarkable and he's a class act, even when he's forced to utter some truly awful dialogue.

The horror element is surprisingly limp, with many of the scares of the cheap variety - sudden shocks that are pretty much the equivalent of the old "cat-jumping-on-the-window-ledge" accompanied by a loud scary sound-effect. There are a couple of creepy moments. One of my favorites features a helpless victim being torn limb-from-limb by a pack of demonic hyenas. I also liked the sporadic insert shots of that infamous demon face that kept popping on screen during various scenes in the movie.

The climactic showdown between Merrin and Pazuzu is nothing special and is a pretty cheap carbon copy of the chilling and truly terrifying battle in the original Exorcist. If anything, the CGI makes much of this stuff seem completely fake. Often Harlin, much like Eli Roth in his overrated Cabin Fever, substitutes bad skin conditions and inexplicable hemorrhaging for genuine scares or even compelling good vs. evil story-telling. But I have to admit there was one central character with severe case of flesh rot who was a scary looking bugger. Before he gets disemboweled you could actually see maggots burrowing just below the surface of his skin.

One pretty creepy coincidence, is that the female lead (Isabella Scarupco) who ultimately proves to be something of a nemesis to the young Father Merrin, bears an uncanny likeness to the caretaking supplicant of Damien Thorn in The Omen. An absolute dead-ringer, if you will.

Dramatically speaking, Exorcist: The Beginning never comes together. Merrin's whole loss of faith thing is terribly labored and predictable. I never bought into it. Similar such tactics worked much more effectively in M. Night Shyamalan's Signs. And as for the interminable Nazi flashbacks, I didn't so much mind them the first 25 times, but they never changed or added any sort of plot advancement and after a while it became clear that they were being used as filler.

In fact the film was so devoid of any kind of effective story structure. It's so muddled and disjointed that by the time we get to the climax (which actually featured a few decent effects) the audience was so focused on the comical and absurd nature of the goings-on that the big scary ending played like the punchline to a long joke.

This poorly concieved and tepid prequel was never even remotely as unsettling as the original and when Pazuzu finally resorts to his old shtick of spouting-off extreme sexual obscenities, it actually fetched laughter from the crowd. You know a horror film is not working when the audience is laughing and trying to one-up each other with one-liner potshots. I saw a midnight screening and it was open season from the get-go. Nothing was sacred, there were so many ridiculous scenes (perhaps the silliest is a Butterfly Effect homage to Silence of the Lambs) that, if you'll pardon the pun - had the audience in stitches. Not only did this scene feature the most Godawful special effects in the film, it was like an out-take from a different movie.

I suppose it could be argued that Exorcist II: The Heretic wasn't without it's funny moments, but John Boorman brought an intentional tongue-in-cheek vibe to that picture. Harlin plays this clumsy prequel straight from start to finish, and it went straight down hill - even after the wheels came off.

The Exorcist remains not only one of the scariest pictures of all time, but one of the best period. It is a timeless classic, and to this very day, it scares the crap out of me. Exorcist II is hardly a masterpiece, but I never found it to be the travesty so many others proclaim it to be. Exorcist III I quite liked and always felt it was sort of underrated. This new prequel is more boring and laughable than one certainly would have hoped for, and in the end it's a pretty cheap excuse to cash-in on a classic

As for Schrader, I really feel for the guy. I have a sneaking suspicion that, while reportedly much more cerebral, his take on The Exorcist prequel is vastly superior to this one. I read a recent article that claimed that original Exorcist novel writer (and the director of Part 3) William Blatty, is quite fond of Schrader's version. I'm hearing whispers that Paul's film will hit DVD. I hope this happens, because I have to assume that it's far more intriguing than Harlin's unimaginative take on what should've, by all rights, been a jump out of your seat thrill-ride.