Based on a true story, The Exorcism Of Emily Rose is a courtroom thriller interspersed with flashbacks of a 19-year-old woman's supposed possession by a demonic spirit.
It's hard to know where reported fact ends and artistic licence begins but director Scott Derrickson and his top-drawer cast treat the material with utmost seriousness.
Derrickson and co-screenwriter Paul Harris Boardman go to great lengths to illuminate the legal rhetoric and religious tug-of-war that sustains their film for almost two hours. Top-calibre acting talent, including Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson and Campbell Scott, anchor their characters in reality, so we have an emotional connection with them as they struggle to rationalise the evidence.
Linney is particularly compelling as an agnostic lawyer forced to question her place in a world outside the realms of the courtroom.
Impressive new talent Jennifer Carpenter spends huge swathes of the film screaming as if her life depended on it, in a demanding lead role, or raging against the church in foreign tongues. It's a performance that sears into the memory.
So much of the film unfolds through the eyes of the girl or her loved ones, without corroborating evidence, that it's difficult to view her plight with anything other than scepticism.
When her exorcism goes tragically wrong, Father Richard Moore (Wilkinson) stands accused of negligent homicide. Karl Gunderson, whose firm represents the archdiocese, persuades lawyer Erin Bruner (Linney) to mount the priest's defence, on the basis that Moore will not take the stand.
She agrees, with her own proviso: that she be promoted once she wins. Interviewing Emily's parents and Father Moore, she struggles to make sense of events around the death.
Meanwhile, the devoutly religious assistant District Attorney argues the girl's death was a direct result of withdrawal from medication used to treat a psychotic epileptic disorder.
