A band of New York exorcists discover that the devil plans to invade the body of atheistic true-crime writer Peter Kelson (Ben Chaplin) and plunge the world into eternal darkness. One of them (Winona Ryder) must find Kelson and convince him to believe before it's too late. "I wanted to create a world that's extremely realistic," Kaminski says. "Nobody's head spins, and there's no gross stuff coming out of people's mouths. It's more psychologically scary."
The script was developed by Meg Ryan's Prufrock Pictures; Ryan herself toyed with the idea of starring, but after she completed City of Angels, she felt she had already done her take on spiritual crisis and rebirth. To accommodate Ryder, the start date for fall's Girl, Interrupted was moved. It's almost as if the devil wanted them to do it. "We gave Satan a lot of good airplay in this movie," producer Nina Sadowsky says, laughing. "Hopefully, he'll be kind to us." Indeed, he may even have made a set visit. Beelzebub, exorcists say, frequently takes the form of a pesky insect, and "we had yellow jackets on every set," Sadowsky says. "Out of season, in New York, in Los Angeles--everywhere."
