SCHRADER'S DEVIL GETS HIS DUE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

IN CASE YOU haven't heard the story, it goes something like this:

When maverick director Paul Schrader turned in his cut of what is coming out today as ``Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist,'' the producers freaked because it wasn't very frightening.

Long story short, they couldn't recut Schrader's version to suit their wishes, so they hired Renny Harlin to reshoot the whole thing. That was released as ``Exorcist: The Beginning'' last August to middling box office and uniform critical derision.

Schrader's film follows the same basic plot as Harlin's, with some of the same characters and actors and different thematic emphases. ``Dominion'' is in every way the more intelligent and elegant of the two, as a brainy independent filmmaker such as Schrader (``Auto Focus,'' ``Affliction'') would make it. It is also not the least bit scary, as the producers noticed.

You may also know Schrader as the brilliant screenwriter of some of Martin Scorsese's most-respected films. Raised in a strict Calvinist household, Schrader has often asked the big spiritual questions in his work, and he foregrounds his concerns about faith, guilt and redemption throughout his prequel.

It isn't boring, but it's not exactly gripping, either.

As in ``The Beginning,'' Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard plays Lankester Merrin, a younger version of the veteran exorcist made famous by Max von Sydow in William Friedkin's untouchably great, 1973 movie.

Traumatized by a Nazi atrocity in his Dutch parish near the end of the war, Merrin has given up the priesthood for archaeology by the time he's summoned to British East Africa in the late 1940s. As in Harlin's version, the attraction is a buried, Byzantine church that shouldn't logically be anywhere near the Kenyan badlands. When it's disturbed, horrible things start to happen.

``Dominion'' features a character not in ``Beginning'': Cheche, a handicapped local outcast played quite well by the pop singer Billy Crawford. He becomes the main vessel for the devil, and rather than deteriorate, Cheche just grows stronger and more beautiful, calling into question the true nature of Satan's influence.

If Merrin is wrestling deeply with this very issue, you wouldn't know it from Skarsgard's inexpressive performance. And in the lady doctor role here, France's Clara Bellar is amateurish in the extreme.

``Dominion's'' most enjoyable scene - for cineastes, anyway - would be Gabriel Mann's ``Diary of a Country Priest'' moment with a demon he thinks is just an afflicted boy.

Intriguing, then, mainly for historical and comparison purposes.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

DOMINION: PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST - Two and one half stars

(R: violence, racism, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Stellan Skarsgard, Gabriel Mann, Billy Crawford, Clara Bellar.

Director: Paul Schrader.

Running time: 1 hr. 56 min.

Playing: Winnetka 21, Chatsworth; AMC 16, Burbank; Cineplex Odeon, Universal CityWalk; Mann's Chinese, Hollywood; Criterion, Santa Monica; Beverly Center, West Hollywood.

In a nutshell: This prequel to ``The Exorcist'' that was made before the one released last year is a thoughtful, if not very gripping or scary, meditation on evil.