Plot: Separated from her actor husband, Hollywood actress Chris MacNeil and her preteen daughter Regan are in Washington DC, where Chris is on an extended location shoot for a movie called "Crash Course". They have rented a brownstone in Georgetown as a place to live during the shoot, after which Chris plans to take Regan to Europe until their new house in Los Angeles is constructed. Chris continually hears noises in the middle of the night emanating from the attic, which she assumes is nothing more than a small infestation of rats. Concurrently, Regan, who had been an even keeled child, is showing periodic signs of unusual behavior, such as hyperactivity, swearing, lying and lack of concentration. The GP, Dr. Klein, who can only surmise the symptoms are a manifestation of stress from the separation and temporary move to DC away from her home, diagnoses her condition, solely based on the symptoms, as hyperkinesia. Despite Dr. Klein and other physicians trying to determine and explain Regan's increasingly abnormal and bizarre behavior with scientific theories, Chris begins to believe that there is more at play, especially as Regan's behavior ultimately includes violence and acts of superhuman strength, which can only be classified as other worldly which Regan herself could not have directly caused on her own, such as the rat-less noises in the attic. Despite having no religious convictions, Chris is convinced that since there is some other worldly force overtaking Regan, a course of action is to have that force - the demon - exorcised from Regan's being. Who contacts her is Father Damien Karras - also an M.D. who acts as a psychiatric counselor for the Catholic church - who Chris for whatever reason had been drawn to as a person she has seen in the neighborhood. Father Karras is facing his own crisis of faith upon the recent death of his mother. He needs not only the permission of the church to proceed but also his own faith that whatever he does will help as opposed to hurt Regan. Who the church also sends is Father Lankester Merrin, who may have a better understanding of what has possessed Regan and why it has chosen her, which is necessary to be able to combat it. The questions become whether Fathers Merrin and Karras have a strong enough faith to exorcise the demon and what they are willing to do to achieve their mission.
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