Movie Review: The Exorcist - Believer

 

When it originally released all the way back in 1973, William Fedkin’s the Exorcist set a very unnerving impression.  During that period, horror was never a genre taken all that seriously; with many a horror title failing to capture much attention in the wake of their cheap effects or poor narrative.  The Exorcist, in its own unsettling way brought a new dimension to the genre by giving viewers something that felt almost real with a credible cast of actors and direction to support it.  The film is touted to this very day as one of the best horror movies ever put out, defining a legacy of tributes and references all across the decades. There were many attempts to replicate the original title’s success through some unremarkable spin offs and sequels soon after. It’s fair to acknowledge that the film’s legacy is unwavering and it’s in 2023 we see the genre’s attempt to revisit this franchise one more time with a modern approach with The Exorcist: Believer.

Directed by David Gordon Green who also took on screenwriting duties with Peter Sattler, The Exorcist: Believer serves as a direct sequel to the original 1973 film set in the modern day. Utilizing a mostly new cast of actors, the film’s biggest call back to the original is with it’s casting of Ellen Burstyn as legacy character Chris MacNeil. Releasing on October 6th 2023, the movie drew in a successful bit of earning at the box office, with a budget of $30 million the film managed to gross $121 million worldwide. While it saw success in the box office, the movie itself didn’t fare all too well with critics; amassing a measly 22% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The story of The Exorcist: Believer follows two young girls called Angela and Katherine who go missing in in a small town in the state of Georgia. After a 3-day manhunt, the young girls turn up with no memory of the prior days. As time passes, the girls’ parents soon notice their children acting out in a concerning manner and soon enough they begin to question what monstrous presence has taken root inside their daughters. With the devil’s own literally possessing the children, it’s up to the parents and their local Christian congregation to pull what resources they can to help cast the spirit from the girls before it’s too late. To do this they must pull the aid of a lady all too familiar with this particular spirit’s demonic antics; Chris MacNeil. It’s the hope of the girls’ desperate parents that they can use every resource at hand to save their daughters before they are too late and their souls are damned forever. 

The story behind The Exorcist: Believer feels undercooked at the best of times and boring at the worst. It’s hard to really appreciate this attempt at a modern-day sequel when it feels like all the narrative wants to do is retread a lot of similar plot beats from the original.  It’s a film which wants to have its cake and then eat it all in one quick stroke. The film takes a good portion of it’s initial runtime to play around with some original concepts but they themselves fizzle out in wide scale of things.  For the parts that are clear reflections from the original movie, even they don’t have the good grace to do anything of interest with them. It’s a story which feels very paint by numbers in it’s attempt to emulate the original movie with little desire or effort to stand out on its own merit’s. It’s also a very disjointed and oddly paced story come to think of it.  In some moments, it puts a heavy amount of time to span out a scene or sequence to generate a sense of suspense and in a flash all of it dissipates when it quickly fizzles out and moves onto a completely new scene.  Directionless is the best word I can come up with when I really look to describe the overall quality of the movie’s narrative. 

That’s not to say there isn’t anything of value in this movie though.  I think despite sitting on the foundation of a weak narrative, the film has glimmer of value through it’s cast. Nearly everyone in this film feels like they’re putting in their all to try and give the film some sense of credibility and weight.  Both Lidya Jewett and Olivia O’Neill give a harrowing performance as the two possessed girls and my only wish is the film gave them more time to inhabit their initial possessions scenes because those moments were where the film drew in the most intrigue from me. While I’m all for returning legacy characters, it’s hard to feel Ellen Burstyn brought all that much to the movie returning as Chris MacNeil.  The hype behind her casting was overplayed because in the large scale of things, she does very little of worth in the wake of the movie itself.  She is a key reflection of what I feel this movie’s biggest problem is. It’s incessant need to call back to the original for a story that would have been much stronger without it. 

I think that’s my biggest problem with The Exorcist: Believer, the movie in itself isn’t downright terrible; it’s just average. It plays too much into its legacy without doing anything of worth to recognize it. By fumbling around paying tribute to what came before, it loses its sense of focus and cohesion with what original plot beats it had to play with.  Even it’s strongly set up cast couldn’t save this movie from feeling oddly rushed and undercooked. I really wish the Rough House Pictures gang would just give it a rest, they had one good run with Halloween 2018, but ever since then; their attempts to “reimagine” these classic horror franchises produces nothing but underwhelming results.