boring mediocrity

Heavily borrowed from The Exorcist: Audrey's hairstyle, hospital gown, her back and forth gyrations in the medical bed with Norman Lloyd's black-suited shoulders, Merrin-like, profiled in the foreground.

The essential narrative is pathetic, sad, and un-scary. The poor trapped soul of a little girl, burned to death and now in torment because, duh, "she came back too early", is sought out by a wimpy Anthony Hopkins, protected by a slow-witted John Beck, and fretted over by a weepy Marsha Mason who has not one tenth of Chris MacNeil's toughness.

Virtually nothing terrifying ever happens in this film. Swift's hissy fits do not equate to the horrors of demonic possession - nor should they, since she is not possessed, but rather just having trouble remembering who she really is and poorly adjusting to her new temporary body - but there is nothing scary about this kind of "personality confusion drama". Its consciously-designed format desperately calls for supernatural terror, but, because of the comparatively genteel reincarnation motif, it can never reach the heights of demonic horror that it so poorly tries to emulate and instill in the viewer.

All in all, a long, drawn-out, sad misadventure into the unspectacular supernatural, with an embarrassingly uncritical attitude and post-end credits coda in praise of Hindu immortality speculation, coupled with the outrageous idea that
for Ivy/Audrey to achieve completion, she has to die at the age of eleven, which makes two uncalled for deaths for the little girl.
I have not read the book, but if it's anything like the film, I doubt I will invest any time in the novel.