by Heath Lynch, Contributing Writer
Way back in 1973, a film came out that truly terrified audiences. It made people vomit in the aisles of the auditoriums, and had religious institutions demanding its banning. It became so beloved by critics, and popular with audiences, that it went on to be the first horror film to ever be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The Exorcist was a cultural phenomenon. It was mesmerizing in its direction, themes, performances, practical effects, original score, and more… and it was immediately let down by a flurry of disappointing to awful sequels and prequels (outside of one re-evaluated cult flick) over the decades since. Now, for the first time in nearly two decades, we get a new entry in the franchise, The Exorcist: Believer. And it… is… meh.
Before we go and break down this film, what works, what doesn’t work, and why, we have to tackle why it exists in the first place. It’s actually a very simple reason to understand, really, and that reason is money. In June of 2021, Universal Pictures acquired the rights to the Exorcist franchise for a whopping $400 million. Yup, that’s right: They spent nearly half a billion dollars for the rights to distribute Exorcist films. Well, when you shell out that kind of money, you want to make your money back. You want to make your money back quickly, and in spades. So, a movie was fast-tracked. Not just a movie at that, but a trilogy of movies. It was determined that Blumhouse Productions would make the film, and coming off the completion of the recent Halloween trilogy, spanning from 2018 to 2022, Blumhouse tapped David Gordon Green and his team to make this new trilogy as well, starting with Believer. And just like the Green Halloween trilogy that cut a new timeline by serving as a direct sequel to the original film, this one would do the same. Believer is a legacy sequel to The Exorcist, taking place 50 years later, and completely disregarding all the other films in the franchise. So that’s how we got to this point, but was the juice worth the squeeze? Eh, not really. Or, at least, not a nearly half a billion dollar squeeze.
The Exorcist: Believer takes the meandering franchise back to its roots. It makes the possession and corruption of an innocent soul, or in this film’s case, souls, the main conceit of the film, and tries to bring back the themes of good, evil, and the place of religious institutions in such conflict. It even focuses on two girls, friends, being possessed, instead of just one, to up the ante. But as much as this movie brings the franchise back to what works, it doesn’t do much in the ways of being creative and original, making the film feel like a much weaker and hollower version of the 1973 classic.
For every interesting or good decision this film makes, it comes around and makes a baffling decision that negates the advances the good ones made. For example, the 1973 original doesn’t show how poor Regan became possessed. She just… was, and that sometimes feels agitating. However, the mystery of not knowing also has its charms, leaving a lot up to the imagination of the audience. In Believer, we get an attempt at seeing the cause of the possession. While that works in a vacuum, the movie spends an overly long first act dealing with this, as the possessed girls disappear and a manhunt has to take place to try and find them. It’s nearly 45 minutes into this film until the girls are found and we can actually begin attempting to scare people in this horror movie, and establish the narrative that would require an exorcism. Cool, we got to see the origin of the possession, but it was a slog to sit through, and felt like a waste of time. The movie is riddled with contradictions like this:
Really good makeup, practical, and visual effects, but not having the creativity to do anything different than what we saw in the original film. Trying to have our attention drawn to two possessed teenagers to increase the scale and stakes, only to focus on one of the teens and their family, and almost entirely neglecting the other to the point that we know nothing about them. Attempting to infect the film with more kinetic editing and jump scares in a way to increase the horror, but forgetting that jump scares aren’t actually scary, and the horror from such a subject is derived from dread and tension over long, sustained takes, and not jumbled flashing images. The list goes on and on.
Irritations like these make this film feel so disappointing. It’s too similar to what we’ve seen before, and it doesn’t measure up. All of this comes together to create a fairly lackluster experience. Which is a real disappointment because the trailers made it look like it could be one of the greatest horror films we’ve seen in many years. I am sad to report that the trailer is scarier than this entire movie. If you’re going here for the ambience, the terror, or the chills, you’re really not gonna find them.
What’s going to be the biggest disappointment for many moviegoers, however, will be how Believer utilizes its legacy characters. Or, more accurately, doesn’t utilize them. Having this playing as a direct sequel to the events from the original film set 50 years ago, there was a lot of hype about having Ellen Burstyn return. Tragically, Burstyn has been turned into yet another legacy character who is depressed, seemingly alcoholic, and isolated in life with no family. Not inherently an archetype that doesn’t fit the character of Chris MacNeil based on the events of The Exorcist, but it rings hollow given we’ve seen so many legacy characters receive this treatment in recent years. What’s even more frustrating, though, is the fact that she’s essentially in the film for a glorified cameo. She commands maybe five to seven minutes of screen time in total, barely more than we’ve seen in the trailers and advertising clips. Burstyn is here as a marketing gimmick, and the nearly 20 minutes devoted to her storyline and interaction ends up feeling completely meaningless in the end. This is the exact kind of cash-grabbing cameo people were afraid of, and the movie is definitely worse for it, especially in regards to what it does to sideline the Chris character, and the eye-roll inducing snippet it gives her in the closing minutes.
But as much as there are frustrations with this film, there are elements worth praising. Aspects like the makeup or practical effects, as I already mentioned. This film also sees the return of the original Exorcist piano theme that’s used to great effect. There’s some decent cinematography that makes certain scenes in the woods, or during the exorcism in the finale, feel quite lucid and intense. The film also features quite a few great performances. Leslie Odom Jr. and Ann Dowd immediately come to mind as the highlights. Especially Dowd, in her crisis of faith and sense of purpose in relationship to her character’s past. I also thought the two teenagers, Lidya Jewett and Olivia O’Neill, are excellent in their scenes of possession. The “Body and the Blood” scene in church, as well as the scenes at the hospital and the final exorcism, really instill an unsettling vibe.
The script also attempts to be really aggressive with its themes of community, and acceptance of different forms of Christianity. Whereas the original film, and all of its subsequent sequels and prequels, play exclusively in the Roman Catholic faith, this movie opts to wield multiple forms of Christian belief banding together to take on a common enemy. We see this not only in the different types of faiths themselves, but in the different types of people who come together. Unfortunately, while I applaud the film for trying to expand the lore and the possibilities of this franchise, it doesn’t quite do its homework to make me invested in what it’s stretching for. Other than Dowd’s character, who gets an interesting backstory, no one else, as it pertains to other religious faiths or members of the community, are given any amount of background whatsoever. These are husks of characters, in the film only in service of a narrative role.
This is made more disappointing when one of the landmark themes that made The Exorcist so successful was the focus on the individual Catholic priests, and the personal struggles they suffered through. Their own wavering faith versus what they devoted their life to. That moral quandary is completely absent here, and the movie is much worse for it. The deepest moral quandary we get in this film is a Sophie’s Choice (or in this case, demon’s choice?) that is far too predictable in its outcome, and not nearly as engaging as any of the rich character development in the priests from the earlier films, and their complex relationship with their faith. And that’s before we get into how the script is largely plagued with really bad dialogue. Characters speak lines that no human being would ever say in real life just to force exposition or thematic ideas. In many ways, this movie does not trust its audience to figure out what it is putting down, even though most of it is fairly obvious, so it just decides to spoon feed us everything we are already seeing. While I appreciate this film for taking a big bite out of the apple, it takes too big of a bite, and ends up choking a little bit on what it is trying to swallow.
I feel like it’s instantly become really popular to pile on The Exorcist: Believer and say that it’s a piece of trash. It’s not good, that’s for sure. But it’s not bad either. It’s a meandering film nowhere near the quality of the original The Exorcist, or even The Exorcist III, when that’s what people had their hopes set for. But it’s still a watchable movie with some solid performances, effects, and scenes. It’s far superior to the other awful entries in this franchise. And while it may not be the most exciting way to start a new trilogy, at least it brings this franchise back to what works best. Hopefully Green can right the ship when The Exorcist: Deceiver releases in 2025, but for now, if you are a fan of this franchise, you can still find elements here that you’ll enjoy.
Rating: Low Side of It Was Just Okay
The Exorcist: Believer is currently playing in theaters
You can read more from Heath Lynch, and follow him on Letterboxd