Pazuzu Unbound

- By Zombie Rob

The winged demon Pazuzu has been relatively quiet in print since William Peter Blatty last brought him to the fore in Legion (and obviously the film Exorcist III) but Pazuzu is back, he’s furious and he’s STARVING!

The book opens at a fierce pace, prologued with a priest standing over a racked & broken young girl. So far, so Exorcist. There’s a dark force in the room, now birthed/disconnected from the girl and the priest finds himself running for his very soul from the demon Pazuzu. I don’t wish to throw in a spoiler but it does not go well for the priest. Not well at all….

From here we’re gradually introduced to the rest of the characters - a disparate but at first glance a seemingly familiar (to the point of cliche) bunch. We’ve got the hard-nosed cop with a burning secret and his sychophantic, soft-arsed sidekick, there’s a young couple who’s first foray into the world of crime has gone spectacularly wrong, there’s a mafia hitman who’s last job has him on the run and making bad decisions and he’s accompanied by one of them. For all of their reasons, they find themselves at the blandly and vaguely named “New Terminal Hotel”. All of these people have nothing in common except for the facts that they have all run TOWARDS The New Terminal Hotel and nobody else really knows where they are. I initially sighed with resigned disappointment at the array of characters as it appeared to be lining up like the film “Identity” but Dutt has drawn and fleshed his gang so successfully that these preconceptions were very quickly discarded. Each of the characters backstories are entirely believable and I invested in each of them and took their journeys with them, rather than watched as a mere observer. What they all discover at The New Terminal Hotel is different for each of them but ultimately ends the same.

It was a ballsy choice to resurrect one of the best known demons in horror as it would always draw parallels & comparisons to The Exorcist. That’s a risky undertaking, considering how beloved the source material is within our favourite genre. There’s been a thousand times more things written ABOUT The Exorcist, along with the countless discussions in countless pubs/websites/forums between countless fanboys like myself. To take up a pen and revisit one of the most successful, critically acclaimed and influential titles of all time brings with it such a weight of expectation and responsibility that it could be seen as a poisoned chalice and make the most committed & confident author runs for the hills. Saurav Dutt had no such reservations and has thrown himself into the mix with wild abandon and BY JINGO, pulls it off. Just.

Where the book falls down is the same thing that, in my opinion, failed William Peter Blatty’s sequel to The Exorcist - the hauntingly titled “Legion”. The strength of The Exorcist was that it was fundamentally a three-handed play, set in a single room. The horror of Regan’s possession is so exquisitely heightened by the claustrophobic intimacy of that situation. The room itself becomes the beginning and end of their arena of battle and good or evil will be championed or vanquished within these walls. There’s nothing physically between good & evil, represented by Pazuzu/Regan on one side and Merrin & Karras on the other. They couldn’t take 5 and have a brew and a sit down - the battle for the very essence of humanity was happening right then, nothing could stop it and there was nowhere to hide. The other aspect was, of course, that Pazuzu wasn’t presented as a massive monster, it was a 12 year-old girl which is so much more terrifying. Children are awesome though weak & vulnerable compared to adults but this girl was darkly evolving before our very eyes but she could also see inside Karras & Merrin, turning their weaknesses, vulnerabilities & fears against them. BY presenting Pazuzu to us in the guise of a sweet, little girl ramps up the psycological tension & horror to the point that your imagination bleeds. However presenting Pazuzu as a marauding demon of unstoppable satanic rage could make this a very well considered & adoringly written creature-feature.