Just Like Heaven

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—9. Spiritual Connections

In the simplest terms, to be dead is to no longer be alive. Generally, the word brings to mind flat-lining hospital monitors, caskets, funerals, and cemeteries. It is when your body can’t move and your brain doesn’t work. Unfortunately, even for those of use who do have a fully functioning body, a fully functioning brain, and, by all medical definitions, are certifiably alive, that doesn’t always mean we are truly living.

In the romantic comedy Just Like Heaven, the questions of what it means to be dead and what it means to truly live are what its main characters must deal with.

At the beginning of the movie, we meet Elizabeth Masterson at the San Francisco hospital where she works as a doctor. We first meet her in her dreams, a quick trip to a soothing garden before she is abruptly woken back up to continue her nearly thirty hour day. Then Elizabeth goes to work. She busily goes from one patient to the next, displaying a competence for what she does and an attitude that makes her a doctor who patients like to meet. Yes, she is tired. Yes, she is busy. But there is no question that Elizabeth is alive.

Next we meet, David Abbott. He is searching for an apartment and seems oddly interested in finding one with the perfect couch. Things are not going well, and when the realtor asks him if he can tell her more about his situation, it is clear that that might just make it worse. But, then, after a flyer advertising an apartment for rent will not stop blowing into him, he finds the place he likes.

He likes the couch, and he immediately moves in. The problem is, he pretty much moves in to stay. He sits in front of the TV, he eats junk, he drinks beer, and at one point or another, he goes to bed. He is alive, he seems to have all the proper physical abilities a living person should have, the question is: What kind of life is he actually living?

Straight from these two lives, one seemingly filled with business and positive productivity, the other filled with almost nothing at all, Elizabeth and David collide. The thing is, as far as David can tell, Elizabeth does not quite conform to the physical standards of being alive. She is just a strangely annoying interruption to his life. As she sees it, however, the life she is interrupting is barely even a poor excuse for living.

Beginning with confrontation, the relationship between Elizabeth and David soon develops into one of understanding and soon friendship. Elizabeth doesn’t know what is really going on with her. David wasn’t doing anything with his life anyway. So, the two team up to try to figure out if Elizabeth is really dead or not.

Through their journey to discover who Elizabeth is, David and Elizabeth seek out the people with whom she shared her life. Their lines quickly become familiar. Elizabeth who? Elizabeth had a life outside of the hospital? Yeah right you were Elizabeth’s boyfriend! Yes, her family and coworkers will testify that Elizabeth was alive. She poured herself into her work. She did an amazing job. But beyond that, Elizabeth’s existence seemed to cease.

More than just a search for Elizabeth’s identity, the journey Elizabeth and David take also opens windows into who David is. He tells Elizabeth about the unexpected death of his wife nearly two years before. He did not die with her. He has endured since then. But it is clear that the loss has left him feeling that he no longer has anything to live for.

Searching for life, both David and Elizabeth discover the realities of the lives they had been living before they met. Elizabeth, busy but unconnected. David, unable to connect, and almost afraid that it is something he will never be able to do again. As they go through this journey, however, the value of connection becomes clear to both of them.

On the brink of death and unable to feel the touch of anyone around her, Elizabeth longs not just to live, but to know those around her, to touch those around her, and to truly be known and touched herself. As her life dangles precariously before her, she seems to know that that touch is the only thing that can restore her to a life of truly living. “Do you think if you could ever really touch me,� she says to David, “I might wake up from all of this?�

At the same time that Elizabeth is seeking to restore her life, David is doing nothing short of coming to life. With each step they take to help Elizabeth, he becomes more interested in what they are doing. After saving a man’s life with Elizabeth’s help, he almost radiates a sense of value and purpose that was not there before. As he gets to know Elizabeth better, his concern for her reveals that as much as he thought he could never truly touch someone or be touched by someone again, he wants nothing more than just that.

At the end of it all, the connection, the knowledge, and the love of touch is what both Elizabeth and David seek with all of their beings. Without it, they fear either physical death or living as dead. Through its power, they see resurrection and life…and, in the end, that is what they find.

Upon first thought, the title of Just Like Heaven could be said to simply refer to the fact that Elizabeth spends most of the movie in spirit like form, and far from being a ghoulish figure, she would have to be considered heavenly. After watching the movie, however, I could not feel anything but that the title goes much deeper.

In the end, the movie is about the power of touch; beyond just touch itself, the power of the love behind that touch. The movie shows us how lives void of touch and love are just good as dead. It reveals how the touch of love has the power to resurrect, to restore, and to bring life and value where there was death.

More than just alluding to heaven as a spiritual realm, the movie points to the center of what heaven is. It depicts the love that embodies all that is heaven, the love that desires us to truly live here on earth, the love that desires to restore us and resurrect us so that we may actually live eternally in heaven. Filled with a clearly intentional purpose to unite, to touch, and to open hearts to love, the movie points to our need for that love and the reality that forces bigger than us desire to pour love down upon us and fill our lives with that touch that tells we are truly loved.

As one of Just Like Heaven's taglines says, the movie helps us to see that in many cases, “Only love can bring you back.� And in world where we feel dead and untouchable more often then we may wish to acknowledge, the power of that statement is truly amazing.

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—9. Spiritual Connections

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

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If I were like most people reviewing The Exorcism of Emily Rose, I would compare it to other horror films. The problem is, for the most part, I have not seen them. I have avoided them at all costs. And, had I not been given the opportunity to attend the press junket for The Exorcism of Emily Rose, I probably would have avoided this one as well.

It isn’t that I have anything against horror movies. In fact, I have a great respect for the way horror films are able to convey some of the deepest messages about good and evil within all cinema. My problem is, horror movies scare me, and I don’t like to be scared. Imagine my surprise when I finally watched The Exorcism of Emily Rose and was able to return to an empty hotel room in strange city and easily sleep through the night.

It wasn’t that the movie didn’t scare me. Just ask anyone sitting near me during the movie. So the questions was—Why wasn’t I still scared after the movie ended? And the answer I found that made the most sense to me—Even at the beginning of the movie, the true terror was actually over with already, and as I saw it, its opponent had clearly won.

If you didn’t figure it out from previews, Emily Rose is dead when the movie begins. The movie itself is framed by the trial of a priest accused of her negligent homicide. Most of the scenes in the preview that scared me so much—flashbacks and remembrances of witness testifying about Emily’s “condition.�

Framed by a trial, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is immediately set apart from almost every other horror film that has been made. In fact, it is probably the only courtroom horror film ever made. From this minor setting difference, however, comes a unique twist on the “exorcism movie�—instead of showing us demons and spiritual attacks as an unquestioned reality, the movie and its characters take that assumed reality and question whether the demons Emily faced were actually spiritual at all.

For most people, this debate is what truly sets The Exorcism of Emily Rose apart. With one side arguing for a logical/scientific explanation of Emily’s “problems� and the other arguing for a spiritual explanation, we, as viewers, are not buckled in for a ride. Instead, we are pulled into an intellectual and moral dilemma that leads us not only to ponder the questions of Emily’s death, but the bigger questions it asks about life itself. Are there spirits? Is there a Devil? And is there a God?

Unlike many horror films, the horror we see Emily endure is excruciatingly realistic. Jennifer Carpenter (Emily) actually performs almost every physical stunt and voice completely on her own, and because of this, both options for her suffering remain believable. Portraying Emily’s suffering from many points of view, however, the filmmakers also make great use of colors and artistry to give a more demonic feel to some scenes and a more scientific and logical feel to others.

With its structure, its script, and its artistry, this film did an amazing job of making me think about possibilities. In the end, however, the conclusion I came to is that whether Emily’s problem was purely medical or purely spiritual, I believe she was most definitely dealing with demons.

As Father Moore says to his attorney Erin Bruner, “Demons exist whether you believe it or not.� Beyond just that, this movie left me thinking that demons exist whether they look like spiritual forces or not. In most of our lives we call them “personal demons� or struggles. As Laura Linney (Brunner) says, “regardless of who you are and what your religious affiliation is…every person has personal demons, everybody, everybody, everybody…�

Are these demons always evils spirits attacking us? I don’t know. But what I do know is that they take control of us and of our lives. They can torture us and certainly steer us off the path that we know we should be on. Maybe they are medical, maybe psychological, maybe spiritual, and maybe they are a mixture. At the end of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, however, the movie left me not thinking about the torture these demons inflicted upon Emily, but rather the end that they actually met.

The movie is filled with scenes of Emily’s heart wrenching suffering. The whole time we watch, however, Emily is already dead. Maybe medicines didn’t work, maybe the exorcism didn’t either. But regardless of why they did not, in the end, she is released from whatever tormented her, and I believe in a better place.

Bruner also deals with her own demons throughout the movie. She is lonely. She is stressed. She drinks too much. And what she does for a living is starting to weigh her down with guilt. Then this case comes into her life. She is not sure what she actually believes about it, but in the end, a locket she “coincidentally� finds gives her security and she is able to let go of the life that weighed her down.

Even Emily’s boyfriend Jason would not trade in knowing Emily to avoid witnessing the torture she went through. “She [Emily] woke me up to things I couldn’t feel before,� says Jason. “I never knew how dead I was before I met her.�

At the end of the trial as a verdict is given and a sentence handed down, the judge utters one of the lines that is still going through my head, “You are guilty Father Moore and you are free to go.�

In this life, there are so many things that can control us. They can hit us on many levels—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Whatever they are, they throw us off course, make life more difficult to lead, and in one way or another, keep us from leading the life we should.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose is about these things that control us. At the same time, the movie that I watched was just as much about deliverance from these very horrors. It may be through medicine, through other people, through events, through so-called coincidences, through almost anything. Whatever its form, however, the deliverance I saw in The Exorcism of Emily Rose was hard to see as anything but a part of something bigger.

As Bruner say to the court in her closing statement: “Either there is a God or there is not�…and as I think back to the events of this movie, whatever their cause or whatever their nature, I cannot believe anything but that there is God, and that that God wants nothing more than to deliver us from whatever we face, whatever that deliverance may or may not look like.

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Raising Questions and Pondering Possibilities

The Exorcism of Emily Rose
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Talent from The Exorcism of Emily Rose discusses the upcoming film


As a rule, most horror movies are not considered intellectual films. They pull us in, they make us scared, and they spit us out on the other side. Sure, some of them involve more figuring, some a bit more suspense, and many a fair amount of well-thought out complexity. When it comes to our participation, however, we’re pretty much just along for the ride; we don’t question what happens, we don’t second guess how things turn out; we just watch, listen, and easily accept whatever reality flashes before us.

This fall, however, horror refuses to let us do just that with the release of The Exorcism of Emily Rose. It has its share of scares, its quota of eerie music, and its required amount of creepy. More than that, however, it makes us think, it makes us consider the "what" and "why" behind its horror, and it makes us ask ourselves what we truly believe is possible and why.

Unlike most horror movies, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is set up to ask questions. It is not unedited reality TV set before us to reveal the truth. It is not a reality we are told to believe in without question. Instead, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is taken to court, put on trial, and set before both characters and viewers alike to decide how we actually define our own realities and how Emily Rose fits into that.

From the beginning of writer/director Scott Derrickson and writer Paul Harris Boardman’s work on the film, Derrickson says their primary purpose has always been to make a scary, entertaining movie. For them, however, doing just that was not enough.

“What I wanted to do was write something that wasn’t propaganda, wasn’t about trying to persuade people to think the way I do, but recognize the fundamental importance of that question, those essential questions—Is there a devil? And more importantly, is there a God? And if so, what’s the implication of that?� says Derrickson.

Making the movie was certainly no slacker project for Jennifer Carpenter (Emily Rose). Everything Emily did, Carpenter did, on her own, no special effects needed. As she put it, she was definitely ready for a good night’s sleep at the end of each day. More than just a physically and professionally challenging role, playing Emily also gave Carpenter’s mind just as intense a workout.

“It made me ask a lot of questions I may not have asked for years,� says Carpenter. As close as she was to every question, however, Carpenter unashamedly admits that she is still working on the answers.

For Laura Linney, the raising of questions instead of assumption of answers was central to her decision to join The Exorcism of Emily Rose cast. The movie does deal with big questions about what we believe, and because of that, says Linney, “I wanted to make sure that the movie was not telling people what to think or believe…We live in a world where certainty is strength…I tend to believe that it’s ok to be unsure…and I think it’s ok for people to have process and to find their own way.�

In the movie, Linney plays attorney Erin Bruner. She is defending the priest charged with the negligent homicide of Emily Rose and is the character assigned to argue for the existence of spiritual forces of evil. Yet, for Bruner, like Linney, the trial and flashbacks that make up the movie do not testify to certainty. Instead, they raise questions and illuminate possibilities that neither Linney nor Bruner feel they are in a place to answer or prove.

There are certainly things that scare Bruner. There are also things that give her some sense of security. When it comes down to Bruner’s actual beliefs about the nature of that fear and/or security, however, Linney says, “She doesn’t know what that is…and I’m similar to her in that way.�

Like Linney, Carpenter also believes leaving faith open to questions is very important. In fact, her favorite line is—“Faith without doubt is very dangerous thing.�

“I just think it says it all,� says Carpenter. “Faith, in, you know, anything, with out a tiny bit of doubt is a dangerous thing.�

In more ways than one, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a movie about faith. It is about everything we believe in and everything we allow to define ourselves, our world, and our existence. It is about those beliefs encountering possibilities. It is about the reality that to actually exist in a living world, whatever faith we have must some day consider the possibilities and questions that fill the world around it and figure out what they mean.

Most movies about good and evil simply present their existence as a fact, as purely manmade, definitely spiritual, or only fictionally valid. The Exorcism of Emily Rose, however, addresses the truth that many of us are not sure what good and evil truly are, that many views about their nature exist, and that, for better or worse, the way in which we perceive good and evil undoubtedly shapes the way we see our reality.

From Linney to Carpenter to Derrickson and Boardman, every person who is a part of The Exorcism of Emily Rose came to it with his or her own beliefs and faiths. And, just as their audiences will meet its questions as it hits theater screens across the nation, they each met those same questions as well.

As Boardman sees it, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a movie that has and will “stretch our parameters of what the usual rules are as we understand them.�

Even a crowd of people who has just seen the movie for the first time knows that the movie’s questions do not aim low. The movie asks the big questions about the big mysteries of life. And as such, their answers cannot be anything but big also. Just consider one of Linney and Derrickson’s favorite lines—“God either exists or he does not, and in either case it is terrifying to contemplate.� BIG questions. I repeat, HUGE.

Less than a week away from the nationwide opening of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Derrickson hopes audiences will enjoy it, fear it, but most of all, stop and think about the truly enormous questions that it raises—“I don’t care what you believe,� says Derrickson. “Those are questions to be reckoned with. Everybody has to reckon with those questions. Everybody has to answer that question, and in some ways, everybody lives their life based on what they believe…about that question.�

Emily Rose’s questions are loaded and ready. The question is, are you?

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