The Big Picture

David Gordon Green’s The Exorcist: Believer struggled with negative reviews and average audience reception, continuing the franchise’s history of disappointment. The original 1973 version of The Exorcist is considered a horror classic and created a new subgenre, while subsequent installments and attempts at reviving the IP failed to achieve the same level of success. The 2000 version, known as “The Version You’ve Never Seen,” restored some footage and altered the ending slightly to provide a more hopeful and positive conclusion for the characters involved.

David Gordon Green’s The Exorcist: Believer didn’t seem to impress theater goers very much. The film made a respectable $26.5 million in its opening weekend, but critic reviews and audience opinion weren’t kind. It’s no surprise. The franchise has a long history of disappointment. 1977’s Exorcist II: The Heretic is regarded as one of the worst horror movies ever made. The Exorcist III was a dud when it came out in 1990, but has thankfully become a cult hit over the decades. In 2004, there was an attempt to bring the IP back with Renny Harlin’s Exorcist: The Beginning. It was so unimpressive that another cut of the same movie came out the next year under director Paul Schrader called Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, but it wasn’t any good either.

Nothing yet has been able to come close to the 1973 original. William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, based on the novel by William Peter Blatty, is an all-time classic and arguably regarded as the best horror movie ever made. Like The Exorcist films of two decades ago, it too had different versions. While a cut released in 2000 called “The Version You’ve Never Seen” has some alterations, a few changes in the ending give us a movie with an entirely different meaning.

The Original Ending of ‘The Exorcist’
Image via Warner Bros. 

When The Exorcist came out in 1973, the film was a powerhouse. Arriving in theaters on the day after Christmas that year, it quickly took over pop culture, earning a staggering $193 million. It was nominated for several Academy Awards in 1974, but even more impressively is that it, almost on its own, created an entire subgenre. Possession movies come out several times a year now it seems, but 50 years ago, this was the first one to be so raw and frightening.

You don’t even need to have seen The Exorcist to know what it’s about. The story of a young girl named Regan (Linda Blair) who has been possessed by a demon, and whose distraught mother, Chris (Ellen Burstyn), eventually enlists the help of Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) and Father Karras (Jason Miller) to save her is burned into our collective conscience. What you might not know, if you haven’t seen The Exorcist, is the ending. The final scenes see Father Merrin die at Regan’s bedside. A distraught Karras, who has been pushed to the edge by the demon inside Regan, pummels her, begging the entity inside her to take him instead. When the demon enters Karras, thus saving Regan, he sacrifices himself, tossing himself out a window. It results in him toppling down a flight of steps to his death.

When Regan and her mother pack up and leave their home, they run into another priest named Father Joseph Dyer (William O’Malley), a friend of Karras’ who was there at his death to read him his last rites. During Karras’ final struggle with the possessed Regan, his medallion of Saint Joseph was ripped off. Chris found it, and she now hands it to Dyer. As the mother and daughter drive away, Dyer turns to those infamous steps and looks silently down them to where his friend sacrificed his life. He then walks away as “Tubular Bells” plays and the credits roll.

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William Friedkin’s Director’s Cut Alters the Ending
Image via Warner Bros.

That ending is the one we knew for 27 years. In 2000, however, came a new cut of The Exorcist, known as “The Version You’ve Never Seen.” This cut restored several minutes of never before seen footage. Over the years, it has become the preferred version of the film and the one we see most. That scary scene of Regan doing the spider walk down the stairs comes not from the original version, but from the 2000 cut, for instance.

There are not a lot of big differences. The ending, with Father Karras’ death plays out the exact same way, but there are two subtle changes in the last scene. In the 2000 cut, when Chris goes to hand Father Dyer the medallion, he tells her to keep it, and she does as instructed. Then, instead of Dyer looking so lost and alone staring at the steps, he walks away and runs into a police detective who had appeared in several scenes, an older man named Lieutenant William Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb). Kinderman, while jovial, seems lonely himself, as more than once throughout The Exorcist he is shown talking about his love for movies and trying to get someone to go with him to the theater. He asks Father Dyer about Regan, before the two men shake hands and start to go their separate ways. Kinderman stops though and calls out, “Father Dyer, do you like films?” They talk for a moment about what to see, before heading off to eat together. As they walk across the street, Kinderman recalls Humphrey Bogart’s famous quote from Casablanca, saying, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

The Alternate Ending to ‘The Exorcist’ Is More Positive
Image via Warner Bros. 

The original version of The Exorcist feels more hopeless in its final scenes. Dyer has Karras’ medallion as a way to remember his friend. He looks at the steps where he died, and that’s it. There is no hope here. Dyer is so lonely and burdened by grief. Hell just came to this part of his world, and now life keeps moving on. It shows how fragile life is, how there’s nothing to fight against the grief with. Good may have defeated evil, but that doesn’t mean life is suddenly grand.

The 2000 version is subtle, but it gives us a more hopeful ending in two moments. First, instead of keeping Karras’ medal, he tells Chris to keep it. This shows Dyer letting go of his despair. He is sad, but he’s not going to hold onto it. Chris keeping it also shows that she accepts faith in God. Not only is she grateful to Merrin and Karras for saving her daughter’s life and soul, but she still believes, despite seeing the most awful, evil things. She’s not just thankful for man, but perhaps for God as well.

Then there is the extension of the ending. No longer do we linger on the burdened Dyer standing at the top of the steps. Instead, he finds a friend. It says that something good can come out of the worst moments, that when all hope seems lost, and grief is unbearable, we can still find a reason to move on in other people. There is light in the dark. Just like the start of a friendship, that is beautiful.