The Exorcist: Believer Review

The Exorcist: Believer

William Friedkin's movie adaptation of The Exorcist has a convoluted past. Its backstory has a lengthy and possibly somewhat jumbled history, just like any other established horror franchise. Fifty years after the first, director David Gordon Green returns to work on the screenplay with Danny McBride, his collaborator on the Halloween reboot (with Scott Teems and Peter Sattler). Two of the films are dueling prequels fueled by production turbulence. Unfortunately, it doesn't really deepen the myth.

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When the Exorcist series is developing its characters and shocking viewers with nuanced story decisions, it is at its best. At first glance, Green seems to be able to work toward this. His film opens with a single father (Leslie Odom Jr.) and his daughter (Lidya Jewett). It is the first of a supposed trilogy. She attempts to communicate with Olivia Marcum, a friend, and expresses her need for her mother. Similar to The Exorcist III, the tale quickly devolves into a mystery surrounding a missing child and the intricate consequences that follow, with the titular ritual appearing far from its mind. Even though I found portions of the writing about Odom Jr. to be too saintly, it's engaging and well-paced.

However, it seems as though Green suddenly realized he was filming an Exorcist movie, at which moment he—excuse the profanity—hits the bed. According to Green and McBride, a 2023 Exorcist film is essentially just another possessed adolescent female film with a lot of CGI gore and not many original ideas.

It felt like I could see Believer's potential crumbling in front of my eyes when Ellen Burstyn made her first-ever appearance in the franchise history—a mere prolonged cameo, at that. By the time the two girls are strapped into chairs and zealots are chanting bible scriptures at them, the movie has degraded into a collection of outdated possession and exorcism movie cliches. Russell Crowe in a drag version of Orson Welles, at least, touring the countryside on a vespa in The Pope's Exorcist.

To tell the truth, Green seems so uninterested in saying anything that it's almost obnoxious. Despite being in existence for fifty years, the Exorcist franchise is hardly the strongest when it comes to thoughtful and nuanced ideas regarding the Catholic Church, religion, and faith. Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism was a small Australian indie horror film that came out earlier this year.Notwithstanding its shortcomings, the movie tackled the problem of radicals' ability to quickly sway society. If you'd like to watch it at home for Halloween, it's available on Tubi. This lacks any such mental concept. Voodoo is present, though.

When the Exorcist movies are at their greatest, they are created by adults for adults, with all of the emotional resonance and critical thought that comes with life's experiences. They provide characters with a range of nuanced emotions to deal with; they frequently involve internal conflicts between the mind and soul in addition to demonic possession conflicts. Unimaginable confrontations were shown to audiences in the film The Exorcist. There's nothing simpler than flipping a switch and declaring, "I believe!" The Exorcist: Believer, on the other hand, feels like a duty-bound person because of his or her irritating lack of curiosity about religion, especially in light of the current state of affairs about religion and the Catholic Church's own transgressions. It seems to even be pro-church, in fact.

Seeing Believer utilize it as a plaything for anonymous kids is regrettable. Content aimed at teens who may be familiar with the "Exorcist" franchise yet have a history of film allergies. It is hard to envision younger audiences being encouraged to visit the original Friedkin 1973 blockbuster, just as it is impossible to imagine anybody who did (and still does) find anything here to raise even a small pulse. Not much in this film hasn't been seen in a dozen previous films. And done better in many locations. Had the title simply been Believer, I doubt that I would have realized that we were in the same universe. I could have been more giving as well.