Exorcist The Beginning

Archeologist Lankester Merrin is asked to go to East Africa to excavate a church that has been found completely buried in sand. Merrin is also an ordained Roman Catholic priest who, still haunted by what he was forced to do during World War II in his native Holland, eschews any religion or belief. He's fascinated by what he finds and that it dates hundred of years before Christianity was introduced to the area. Accompanied by a young priest, Father Francis, to keep an eye on the religious elements of what they find, Merrin makes his way to the camp. There he meets a young doctor, Sarah and soon realizes there is an air of gloom that envelops the entire site. Workmen go mad and a young boy is mauled by a pack of hyenas while completely ignoring his younger brother Joseph. Inside the church itself they find signs of desecration. Merrin is forced to re-examine his lack of faith and come face to face with the devil.

Father Lankester Merrin became a non-believer after seeing the atrocities committed on the innocent during WW II. He has since moved to Africa to work as an archaeologist. There, an antiques dealer comes to him with a request. An old Christian Byzantine church has been unearthed in Kenya, surprisingly intact, as if it were buried right after its completion. Merrin is asked to find an ancient relic believed to be buried in the church. Once Merrin arrives at the excavation site, however, inexplicable tragedies strike the innocent people. Merrin soon discovers that an ancient evil force has been set free due to the excavation, and if he wants to stop it, he will have to start believing once again.

Father Lankester Merrin thinks that he has glimpsed the face of Evil. In the years following World War II, Merrin is relentlessly haunted by memories of the unspeakable brutality perpetrated against the innocent people of his parish during the War. In the wake of all the horror he has seen, both his faith in his fellow man and his faith in the Almighty have deserted him, and he can no longer honestly call himself a man of God. Merrin has traveled far from his native Holland in a desperate attempt to try to forget and escape all the evil that he had witnessed there. While currently in Cairo, Egypt, he is approached by a collector of rare antiquities and asked to participate in a British archeological excavation in the remote Turkana region of Kenya. They have unearthed something extraordinary and unusual...a Christian Byzantine church dating from the 5th century, long before Christianity arrived in East Africa, and in inexplicably perfect condition--as if it had been buried immediately after it was completed. The collector wants Merrin, an Oxford-educated archeologist, to find an ancient relic hidden within the church before the British find it. Interested, Merrin agrees to take the job. But beneath the church, something much older and malevolent sleeps, waiting to be awoken. When the archeologists start excavating, strange things begin occurring, and the local Turkana tribesmen who were hired to work refuse to enter the site. Things only get worse, ultimately resulting in madness and death. Merrin watches helplessly as the atrocities of war are repeated against another innocent village--atrocities he had hoped and prayed never to see again. The blood of innocents flows freely on the East African plane, but the horror has only just begun. In the place where Evil was born, Merrin will finally see its true face.