Trivia for
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) More at IMDbPro »

• Based on the true story of Anneliese Michel, a young German woman who suffered a similar fate to the fictional Emily Rose in the 1970s, and "The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel", an account of the subsequent court case by expert witness Felicitas D. Goodman. Michel's parents and the two priests who performed her exorcism were prosecuted, and ultimately jailed for manslaughter. The most significant differences are that Michel periodically fasted for several months as part of her exorcism and remained on medication until her death, while the fictional Rose refused to eat due to her delusions and was taken off her medication by her carers.
  
  
• The original inspiration for the movie was a book titled "The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel" by Dr. Felicitas Goodman. She was the anthropologist called in as an expert on possession. However, the original was heavily adapted for cinematic purposes.
  
  
• Madeline Zima was considered for the role of Emily Rose.
  
  
• At the end of the film the alarm clock beside Laura Linney's bed reads 11:14. This is a reference to the film titled "11:14". Both "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" and "11:14" were produced by Firm Films.
  
  
• During the scene when Emily (Jennifer Carpenter) is in the church and starts to bend over backwards, Carpenter had to wear a harness to make the effect more inhuman.
  
  
• There were two dolls constructed for this film. The first was where Emily Rose would lock her limbs. The other was during the dorm scene where she is on the floor in a twisted position. The director ultimately never used a doll in the dorm room scene because he found out that Jennifer Carpenter is double jointed, and decided that the positions she was able to contort herself into were more unsettling than what could be accomplished with the dummy.
  
  
• Since this film's release, a persistent urban legend has sprung up amongst students at the University of Minnesota. According to the legend, Pioneer Hall, an allegedly haunted dormitory, was where Emily Rose was first "possessed," as seen in the film. However, as Emily Rose is a fictional version of Anneliese Michel, a German woman who never attended the U of M, this legend is obviously false.
  
  

Related Links