The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Erin Bruner, an ambitious defense attorney recently made junior partner, accepts a high-profile case offered by her firm: defending Father Richard Moore, a small-town Catholic priest charged with negligent homicide. Father Moore performed an exorcism on a college freshman, Emily Rose, who died shortly afterward of malnutrition and self-inflicted injuries. Bruner is agnostic and treats the case as a career move. The trial frames the film, with devout-Methodist prosecutor Ethan Thomas arguing that Emily died of medical neglect during a religious ritual, and Bruner attempting to prove her behavior could not be explained by epilepsy or psychosis alone.

Flashbacks reconstruct Emily's possession. A bright young woman from a rural Catholic family, she earns a scholarship to college and is awakened at 3 a.m. one night by a violent supernatural presence pressing down on her body. The symptoms escalate at school — contortions, choking, animal-like vocalizations, visions of demonic figures in fellow students. Doctors diagnose epilepsy and prescribe anticonvulsants. She grows worse on the medication. Father Moore is called in.

Father Moore identifies six demons inhabiting Emily and conducts an exorcism in her family's barn at night. During the ritual, restrained on a bed in front of family and a doctor with a tape recorder, Emily speaks in multiple languages and voices the names of the demons. The exorcism fails to expel them.

After the failed rite, Emily writes a letter recounting a vision in a field outside the house, in which the Virgin Mary offered her a choice: to be taken to heaven freed of the demons, or to remain on earth in suffering so that her continued possession would stand as a public sign that demons are real. Emily chose to remain. She died days later of multiple organ failure caused by her self-mortification.

Bruner herself begins experiencing the 3 a.m. phenomenon as the trial proceeds — clocks stopping at that hour, a burnt smell in her apartment, a sense of being watched. Father Moore warns her that the demons turn their attention to anyone who threatens to expose them. The jury hears the recorded exorcism, Emily's letter, and competing medical and theological testimony. They find Father Moore guilty of negligent homicide but, at Bruner's invitation during sentencing, recommend time served. The judge accepts. Father Moore is freed. The closing scene shows Emily's grave, marked with an epitaph quoting her letter.