'EXORCISM' COURT CASE ISN'T ALL THAT SCARY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

YOU CAN'T HELP but root for a thoughtful horror film such as ``The Exorcism of Emily Rose.'' Until, that is, you just grow weary of it.

``Based on a true story,'' as the saying goes, it's a fictionalized courtroom drama involving an exorcism-related death. In the movie, Laura Linney plays the smart, careerist defense attorney Erin Bruner, whose client, Father Richard Moore (Tom Wilkinson), is charged with letting the title college girl (newcomer Jennifer Carpenter) die of negligence during an extended de-possession effort.

The problem with the movie is that all of the scary stuff is presented in flashback during extensive - and extensively suspenseless - trial scenes. You see somebody's description of what went on, which tends to undercut the veracity of any fear factor, and it's broken up in a way that squelches the terror momentum every time it starts to build.

Whether or not demonic forces are out to get Bruner for defending the priest is rendered pretty ambiguously as well. And not in a very frightening way, either.

Director and co-writer Scott Derrickson is, perhaps understandably, more interested in exploring the question of faith vs. the hard-evidence purviews of the law and modern medicine. Though his sympathies are with the supernatural approach, Derrickson does not play this out in any doctrinaire manner.

However, he misses an opportunity to bring the debate to a more personal and dramatic level. Well aware that prosecuting a priest is going to inflame the religious fringe, the D.A.'s office assigns the people's case to a devout churchgoer, Campbell Scott's Ethan Thomas. Rather than show this man wrestling with his own beliefs in such a clearly conflicting position, Thomas is quickly reduced to a standard courtroom-movie pit bull.

Meanwhile, Father Moore always seems reasonable, despite his conviction that demons need to be fought, while the ever-intelligent Linney brings introspective persuasiveness to a shrewd rationalist who accepts that there's a lot she needs to learn about the spiritual and moral dimensions religion addresses. Carpenter overdoes the possessed hysterics and contortions at times, but her performance does make for most of the film's potent scares.

Intriguing as far as it goes, ``Emily'' either needed to be more psychologically and intellectually probing or flat-out horrific. A devil's bargain was cut between the two, and it left the movie in a kind of limbo.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: violence, language, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson, Campbell Scott, Jennifer Carpenter.

Director: Scott Derrickson.

Running time: 1 hr. 54 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: More courtroom drama than horror flick that boils down to an argument for faith over science. Thoughtful, not very scary, tedious after a while.