Film Review: The Exorcist: Believer

NOTE: While the WGA strike is officially over, as of me writing this, SAG-AFTRA is still on strike, demanding fair wages, better working conditions, protection from AI, among many other important issues that face actors, as well as other sections of the entertainment industry. I am in full support of the strike, and I encourage you to read about it, spread word, and if possible, consider donating to the Entertainment Community Fund, which helps financially struggling artists and workers in the film and television industry. Thank you.

 

Following up a film like The Exorcist is never going to be an easy task for anyone involved. It set the standard and formula for an entire subgenre for horror films for half a century now. Given the consistent financial success of David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy under the Blumhouse banner, it does make some sense for him to see if he can capture the same success with another horror trilogy tackling a big intellectual property, even if the latter two of the trilogy proved divisive. However, I will always go to bat for Halloween Ends as a genuinely terrific film, one of the best of the franchise, and one of my favorite films of that year.

The start of this supposed trilogy is The Exorcist: Believer, which takes place in modern day, and primarily follows Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.), a single father to young Angela (Lidya Jewett). He is managing life well enough following the death of his wife when she was pregnant during an earthquake in Haiti, now working as a photographer. However, one day Angela walks into the woods with her friend, Katherine (Olivia Marcum), and they never reached home. They were found alive after three days, but something about them has changed. And Victor’s neighbor/local nurse/former Catholic novitiate Ann (Ann Dowd) believes the answer lies in the experiences of one Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn).

As someone who has been an active defender of Halloween Ends, it saddens me to say that The Exorcist: Believer does not quite live up to the legacy built by the original film, and what is arguably worse is that the film ultimately feels like a fairly generic possession film with not a lot of new to the formula. It goes through all the beats you’re familiar with if you’ve seen any popular possession movie in the past several decades. The only real difference this time around is just the attachment to The Exorcist franchise and the fact that two girls are possessed this time around.

A film being generic plot-wise isn’t the end of the world, plenty of great films can transcend those qualities either other ambitions whether through the storytelling itself or in the craft. But David Gordon Green and his co-writer, Peter Sattler, don’t really do that either. That’s not to say the film isn’t well made. There are some good makeup work, some cool editing choices, sequences that – in and of themselves – are pretty compelling to watch unfold. But there is never a moment where it really clicks with you as to why this story was told, unlike with the first in the Halloween trilogy where the hook of Laurie Strode as a PTSD suffering survivalist is an immediately recognizable and interesting hook. This doesn’t have that.

The connections to the original film are weirdly superfluous. Chris’ inclusion doesn’t add up to all much, only being directly involved in the plot for a couple scenes before unceremoniously being whisked away to a different location, never to take part in the activities to come. There is even a bizarre inclusion of a thread regarding the whereabouts of her daughter Regan, a deeply strange mystery to throw at the audience, regardless of whether you’re familiar with the character or not, and the way it is wrapped up is just as puzzling. The whole trajectory of her character and the backstory since the first film is just baffling to me. You could almost remove Chris from this film, and almost nothing would change.

The film does try to add something that might be interesting for a possession movie, which is the secularization of the act itself. This has been a very Christian dominant genre, but the film tries to make it so that it isn’t another case of the Catholic church swooping in to save the day. Even if they are a part of the help, they are joined by a ritualist healer played by Okwui Okpokwasili. There’s even a nice monologue from Chris regarding the healing nature of community and how that relates to faith and how evil can be defeated from that. However, these ideas don’t have much room to breathe outside of these small moments or details.

If you’re just looking for some scares, I don’t think there’s much to find here unless you’re especially sensitive to this kind of movie. There are some effectively creepy moments in the first half as it builds up to the fireworks factory later on. Subtle images, eerie jump scares, subliminal flashes of nightmare fuel, but by the time we do get to the theatrics, it’s business as usual, nothing out of the ordinary from any one of these supernatural horror movies you’d see nowadays. It’s also surprisingly not as gross as the original film. The puke, the blood, body morphs feels way more tame than what we got from the 1973 film, which feels like the complete opposite of what you’d usually get from a modern horror film.

If there is a single word to describe The Exorcist: Believer, it is “underwhelming.” Considering the impact of William Friedkin’s film, which has stood the test of time, being considered not only one of the best horror films, but one of the greatest films of all time period, it’s odd just how disposable this new films comes across, even as it tries to go through the motions that you’d expect from a legacy sequel. The other Exorcist films beyond the first can be described in many ways, but at least they were all aiming for something that wasn’t just the same old thing. There are nuggets of good ideas here about the nature of faith, and the film is full of really solid performances, but the material itself is simply lackluster, and in need of some serious revision. I don’t know how much the filmmakers have planned for the sequel films already, I am mildly curious to see where this goes, considering it doesn’t necessarily leave a lot of loose ends open, but you shouldn’t have to wait for the goods to show up in a sequel when the first film should have made you invested to begin with. I wasn’t especially invested in the film, but I also wasn’t bored, I was mainly wishing that these pieces of good filmmaking sprinkled throughout were in a movie that was far more deserving of them.

 

The Exorcist: Believer is now out in theaters.