Fifty years after The Exorcist landed in cinemas and had audiences fainting in the aisles, and 18 years after Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist limped into movie theatres and left audiences largely disinterested, the latest Exorcist film finally arrives in UK and US cinemas. The movie – which goes on general release today – is called The Exorcist: Believer and is the sixth entry in the disjointed (and largely all over the place) horror film series.
Directed by David Gordon Green, The Exorcist: Believer stars Leslie Odom Jr., Lidya Jewett, Ann Dowd, Olivia Marcum, and Ellen Burstyn. The film picks up decades after the events of the original film, and focuses on two young girls who become possessed by a demonic entity.
In the movie, Angela and Katherine are friends, who one night after school head to the woods to perform a séance. They don’t tell their parents where they are going and later that night they promptly disappear.
Three days later, after an extensive search, the girls are found 30 miles away, huddled together in a barn. Although the girls display signs of distress they have no knowledge of what happened to them and don’t appear to have been kidnapped or assaulted.
Over the next few days, the girls and their parents attempt to move forward with their lives, but this proves impossible. The girls are now displaying erratic behaviour, and this goes beyond post-traumatic distress and suggests demonic possession.
With their parents unsure of what to do, Angela’s father, Victor seeks out assistance from Chris MacNeil. Fifty years ago, Chris’ daughter, Regan was possessed by a dark force, and Victor is hopeful she can provide him with a way to help Angela and Katherine.
*Sigh*
Where do I begin?
*Takes an enormous deep breath*
If I can leave you with anything positive today, I can safely say The Exorcist: Believer isn’t the worst entry in the Exorcist film series. I can also tell you it isn’t a complete clusterfudge of a movie either.
The Exorcist: Believer is miles better than Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) (which is just an awful film in general), and I’d argue it’s also better than the two Exorcist prequels, Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) and the aforementioned Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist. I’m not going to say it’s much better than these films, but it’s certainly no worse.
So, if nothing else, The Exorcist: Believer isn’t complete rubbish and I think it’s important to note this and then reflect.
*Pauses for thought*
Do we feel like we’ve reflected enough? OK, reflection done.
What The Exorcist: Believer is, is largely a very dull, very uneventful, very generic possession/exorcism movie. It brings very little to the table, it’s not scary at all, and the second half is yawn-inducing.
How yawn-inducing? Well, I yawned eight times, while also fidgeting in my seat, so that should give you an indication of how disinterested I became in the film during its two-hour runtime.
Two hours is too long. There’s simply not enough excitement or imagination for this amount of film, regardless of what franchise it is connected to.
The Exorcist: Believer also feels like a tenuous Exorcist movie at best. The film’s links to the original are few and far between, and I’m sorry to say Ellen Burstyn’s return to the role of Chris MacNeil is a glorified cameo and not much more.
If you’re hoping Burstyn is here for big scenes and some huge ties to the original you’ll feel a little disappointed. It seems as if she’s merely in the movie so the PR department can slap her name on the poster and convince long-time fans to care.
In fairness to The Exorcist: Believer, although it is quite a dull movie, the film starts off fairly well and this does offer up some hope. The opening act, which fills in some important backstory about Angela’s father, Victor gives the movie something heartfelt and tangible to hang on to, and this is all good stuff.
Likewise, all of the material surrounding the disappearance of Angela and Katherine is good too. This section of the film is a little creepy, and conjures up a strong set-up for the rest of the film, so it’s not all dullsville.
The problem is, once the girls return and all the demonic possession stuff starts to take place, the film suddenly becomes less interesting. From here on out, The Exorcist: Believer goes through the motions, and the remainder of the film appears to become a checklist of things we all expect to see in an exorcism movie.
A parent who doesn’t believe in demonic possession? Check.
Possessed victims covered in scars and shouting out profanities? Check.
A man of the cloth refusing to take part in an exorcism, then doing it anyway? Check.
Check, check, check-ity, check check. It’s all here, it all happens when you expect, and it’s all been done countless times before.
Is any of it presented in a bad way, or do any of the scenes look particularly ropey? Nope – and this is the film’s saving grace. But being a competently put-together movie doesn’t stop a film from being unappealing and that’s really what this is.
When The Exorcist was released in 1973, it wasn’t one of many, many exorcism/possession movies, and as such, the sheen hadn’t worn off. However, The Exorcist: Believer exists in a time where we’ve got Conjuring films and The Pope’s Exorcist coming out of our arse, so being a competent movie simply doesn’t cut the mustard.
The best way to put it is director David Gordon Green doesn’t inject enough sparkle into the film. He fails to push any scene into new or unexpected places and this is a big problem.
If you’re a horror fan, you’ll be familiar with Green as he was recently responsible for resurrecting horror icon Michael Myers, via a trio of Halloween movies. His trilogy started out strong, then began to fall apart in the middle, and the less said about the final instalment the better.
Green currently has plans to deliver a trio of Exorcist movies too, starting with Believer and continuing with the proposed Deceiver, and finishing with an as-yet-untitled third entry. Will he get to make all three? I have no idea, but I’m not convinced The Exorcist: Believer is the strong start he needs.
Did I come out of this film thinking, ‘yep, I’d like more of that?’ No, I did not, and this is certainly not the result you want when trying to get a new trilogy off the ground.
At least with the Halloween films he managed one good entry before things went bad. With The Exorcist: Believer he merely achieves a mediocre film and that’s all.
I suppose mediocre is at least better than a frustrating film like Halloween Kills (2021), or a rage-inducing one like Halloween Ends (2022). Once again, the less said about that the better.
To offer up some positives for The Exorcist: Believer, the cast are all good and this is especially true of Leslie Odom Jr. as Victor and Lidya Jewett as Angela. OK, so Ellen Burstyn is wasted in her brief return as Chris MacNeil, as is Ann Dowd in a thankless role as Victor’s neighbour, but the actors are good regardless of the poor material they are given.
The movie is also fine on a technical level, so… erm… yay for that. It looks good, the effects are OK, and all the sound and lighting do the thing that sound and lighting are required to do.
But when you boil it all down, The Exorcist: Believer just isn’t very interesting. There is some good stuff in here, and occasionally flashes of decent ideas will bubble to the surface, but it’s not enough to matter.
If this film didn’t carry the Exorcist name, I wouldn’t even spend this much time talking about it. In fact, irrespective of the brand name, I’m going to stop discussing it here.
The Exorcist: Believer is fine in places, and it is in no way Hellish, but it gets progressively less appealing the longer it is on. It is a mid-level movie at best, largely because it is serviceable, but it’s nothing more than that and is mostly underwhelming.
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