Was Father Morning Actually in That Cell?
I can't tell if it's real or not, there are angles where his body is gone but then again he's crucial at making Damien fight the demon which led to Kinderman shooting Damien.
shareIirc, the Kinderman/Morning shots were filmed separately - that's why the two actors don't physically interact at the same time. Morning was definitely in the cell, but not all the time, e.g., when the floor is shown without Morning lying on it. Scott and Williamson do, however, appear together in the cell, at the 1:40:18 mark. It doesn't look fake to me, but since they don't interact, possibly it was an extreme quickie shot, just to establish that both actors/characters do inhabit the same space for at least a few seconds...
shareThanks. But does that mean Morning didn't die, or what?
shareBecause of these flaws, we don't know if Morning died or not, so it's up to personal interpretation. I prefer to think that he lived and that - like in the original story - Kinderman gained a new priest-friend, and so they could also reminisce about Karras and Dyer. Otoh, if Morning didn't survive, then he's another sacrifice, like Karras and Merrin before him, and Kinderman can take little comfort from Morning's life - except, of course, that Morning's "Fight him, Damien!" helped to save the day for all three of them.
If you were going for the idea of a supernatural Morning in your first post (not saying that you were - it just occurred to me), i.e., that Morning just seemed to vanish, that would make a spooky "good ghost" kind of myth for the story. But of course Morning does have physical existence - the university president knows him as the chaplain and as a priest who has had exorcistic experience; and it's his real blood dripping from the ceiling onto his charred copy of the Ritual that first alerts Kinderman to his presence.
Anyway, I guess it's just up to the viewer to decide Morning's ultimate fate...