“The Exorcist: Believer” review — sequel to horror classic is an unscary dud
★★☆☆☆ The power of David Gordan Green’s latest horror reboot fails to compel.
Fifty years ago William Freidkin’s film adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist was unleashed onto an unsuspecting public. The world, evidenced by the film’s now legendary reception — stories of scores of cinema-goers fainting, vomiting and descending into various states of wild hysteria, was simply not ready for such unimaginable horror.
Today the film is almost universally regarded as the single greatest horror movie ever made. An unsurmountable behemoth of genre filmmaking that is forever entrenched in popular culture, both for its on-screen qualities and enduring reputation as the ultimate apex chiller.
Naturally, then, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to bank on the IP, exhuming the original classic not with the intent of adding to its remarkable legacy, but merely to make money.
Wisely choosing to ignore the sequels (and presumably prequels) of the first, The Exorcist: Believer focuses predominantly on Victor, a single father (Leslie Odom Jr.) who lost his faith when a deadly earthquake killed his pregnant wife. Years later he lives in small-town Georgia with his now-teenage daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett), a bright young woman whose life tragically came at the cost of her mother’s.
Their relatively peaceful lives are turned upside down, however, when Angela and her best friend Katherine (Olivia Marcum) fail to return home after performing a strange ritual in the woods. Three days later the two girls are found, wide-eyed, virtually mute, and eventually demonstrating all the usual signs of demonic infestation.
Fighting a losing battle to save his little girl now warped beyond recognition, Victor, along with Katherine’s parents, a concerned nurse with a past (Ann Dowd) seeks out Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), a former actress-turned-author whose deadly battle with evil incarnate tore her own family apart.
Financed by Jason Blum’s studio dedicated to producing mostly crap jump scare extravaganzas, and helmed by David Gordan Green — the guy who gave us one genuinely good Halloween movie before giving up and filling the rest of his trilogy with mindless mayhem and self-parody — The Exorcist: Believer attempts to emulate the look and feel of Friedkin’s iconic movie.
The effort fails because its makers either a) don’t know how to make a genuinely scary movie, or b) don’t have the balls to deviate from the rubbish conventions that shackle modern horror. I think it’s a bit of both, personally.
Believer is simply nowhere near scary enough. The film completely fails to understand the sheer existential terrors of the original, opting instead to simply ape elements in a copy-and-paste job that fails to carry over with any real weight or conviction. Jumpscares are infuriatingly present, the idea of twisting the sound dial up to maximum for scene transitions immediately reduces the film to something more like those awful and never-ending Conjuring movies.
Worse yet is the film’s incessant need to explain everything. Literally everything. They should’ve called this The Exorcist: Explainer.
The original worked so well because it was simple. An easy-to-follow setup with basic dialogue, tapping into our base fears with a nightmare that Friedkin and Blatty refused to dull through rationalisation. One of the reasons behind The Exorcist’s enduring success is it strands you in the fear of not knowing.
These guys clearly didn’t get the memo, saddling the fantastic Ann Dowd (Hereditary, Side Effects) and a returning Ellen Burstyn with pages of exposition. All this wordy junk robs the viewer of any chance to imagine a hellish domain that has ensnared two innocent girls, and at the same time also feels like an attempt to reach a word count. Wait, did I write this?
It’s the performances that save this from bottom score purgatory. Leslie Odom Jr. puts in a strong showing in the gender-swapped concerned parent role, leading an ensemble of similarly-dedicated turns. Also well worth praise are the performances from the film’s duo of girls in peril. Both are great, but Lidya Jewett in particular is able to elicit tremendous empathy in a showing that elevates the film, even if only for a moment.
Prior to his death earlier this year, William Friedkin was asked for his thoughts on The Exorcist: Believer. The legendary filmmaker was never one to mince his words and didn’t disappoint.
“The guy who made those new Halloween sequels is about to make one to my movie, the Exorcist. That’s right, my signature film is about to be extended by the man who made Pineapple Express. I don’t want to be around when that happens.
“But if there’s a spirit world, and I can come back, I plan to possess David Gordon Green and make his life a living hell.”
Haunt away, Bill.
