“The Exorcism of Emily Rose” is based on a true story and is not really about the exorcism of Emily Rose but rather about the trial of a priest (Wilkinson) who got charged for negligent homicide not because of the performed exorcism but because he advised a young girl Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter) to stop taking a medicine she didn’t want to take in the first place.
OK, so there is an exorcism happening somewhere along the lines but it doesn’t make the movie, most of the time is spent in the court room listening to prosecutor Ethan Thomas (Campbell Scott), a man of faith and fact and his monotonous and lackluster speeches.
The whole argumentation of both sides leaves much to be desired and is nothing but circumstantial and in the defender’s case not even that but solely based on faith and that with the defendant being an agnostic; an odd concept inside a courtroom. Hence the verdict in the end is just as odd and basically the only possible one.