Starring Russell Crowe, Ryan Simpkins, Sam Worthington, Chloe Bailey, Adam Goldberg, Adrian Pasdar and David Hyde Pierce

Directed by Joshua John Miller

Vertigo, out now

Anthony Miller (Russell Crowe) lost years of a promising career to alcoholism and excess. Struggling to be a father to his troubled daughter, Lee (Ryan Simpkins), he’s given a chance for a role that could change everything. But The Georgetown Project is no one’s dream job and the role of a lifetime starts to hit way too close to home.

For the first half, this feels like the sort of arch, deliberate meta-fictional horror that A24 excel at when they aren’t selling their soul for half-arsed AI posters for Civil War. Crowe and Simpkins are great as a father and daughter duo who are different, complimentary kinds of dysfunctional. Simpkins’ quiet fury at having to deal with her father’s nonsense is exhausted and deeply realistic. Crowe’s bustling, mournful bear of a man is a subtly realized exploration of trauma and guilt. Anthony’s the best man for the role, and so is Crowe, the years hanging off both of them in a manner that a friend and colleague noted was very similar to Jean Claude Van Damme vehicle JCVD.

There’s some great supporting work too, especially Chloe Bailey as the movie-in-a-movie’s lead and Adam Goldberg turning in stunning work as the venomous, possibly evil director. Also Sam Worthington as a young, enthusiastic actor who sometimes struggles to connect with emotion which feels like a very deliberate, and self-aware, choice. But playing entirely against type, David Hyde Pierce steals the show as Father Conor, the religious consultant. He’s urbane, calm, funny and terrified and his scenes are all the movie’s best moments. His delivery of ‘When it starts to happen, run’ is worth seeing the movie for all by itself. The fact the film is about an unnamed remake of The Exorcist gives a strong, wry foundation to events, as does the fact Joshua John Miller directs and co-writes the movie. Miller is the son of Jason Miller, who played Father Karras in The Exorcist. Art imitating life, life curdling art. Or is it the other way around?

I’m always hesitant to draw conclusions without solid evidence but the second half – and the film was completed in 2019 before reshoots in 2024 – feels very, very different. There are two deeply traumatic, clearly supernatural events which are passed by largely unremarked. Two characters appear in a room they clearly weren’t in a moment before and the confrontation that closes things feels more studio than plot driven. It’s not that some of this doesn’t work, some of it does, but the gear shift between halves is very, very clunky.

It’s made even more frustrating by the fact Hyde Pierce and Crowe do their best work in this half and that the ending itself has a surprising emotional punch. Most tellingly, the fact this has had a raft of secret preview screenings and a marketing campaign designed to look as much like The Pope’s Exorcist (also Crowe, entirely unrelated, very fun) suggests the studio panicked, demanded changes that hurt the film and here we are. It’s a massive shame because that first half is fantastic, and the second half is also in the film.

Verdict: Almost incredible, this is at least interesting. But it could, and perhaps should, have been more. 7/10

Alasdair Stuart