THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER - Mark Reviews Movies

The Exorcist: Believer, Universal Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 6, 2023

The climax of The Exorcist: Believer involves an exorcism, naturally, but since we've seen that already in the 1973 original (as well as its countless imitators and movies inspired by the execution of director William Friedkin's genre-defining-and-defying classic), co-writer/director David Gordon Green seems to feel obligated to up the stakes. This time, the exorcism is of the improvised variety, bringing in people of various faiths and religious traditions to just sort of wing it as the lives and souls of two pre-teen girls hang in the balance. The scene is dumb on its face, because there's no tension in something with no apparent method, but it is, thankfully, a helpful metaphor for Green's approach to this belated and unnecessary sequel.

The whole thing feels as if the filmmakers are just throwing together assorted elements, because we expect them and because they couldn't think of anything new or different. It gives the superficial appearance of honoring the original film, by bringing back at least one character from it (two, for sure, if one counts the demonic presence) and hitting the basic beats of that story, yet being bigger than it. If this weren't connected to the '73 film, it would be a wholly shallow and generic exercise in this subgenre of horror. Because it is directly connected to that great film, though, it's also a grave error in judgment—one that suggests Green has no idea what the power of The Exorcist is and why it has had the longevity for him to follow it up 50 years later.

That film works as one of the prime examples of horror because it is first and foremost a human story, which just happens to revolve around what's increasingly revealed to be a supernatural event. This one fails, in part, because it doesn't possess a single character who isn't here to serve the requirements of its formula. Sure, Leslie Odom Jr.'s Victor Fielding, a single father with no religious beliefs who's forced to protect his daughter from the influence of a demon, feels somewhat real. How much of that, though, is simply Odom's sturdy presence or the fact that so much of his character is a reflection of Ellen Burstyn's Chris MacNeil?

There's so much shorthand in this story, from its indirect callbacks to its groan-worthy direct ones, that it barely feels like a story unto itself. The screenplay, written by Green and Peter Sattler, is the equivalent of a greatest hits album—except that it's more akin to having someone play said album, listen to about 10 seconds of a song, and skip to the next one, before repeating the process over and over again.

The plot has Victor, whose pregnant wife dies in the 2010 earthquake in Haiti (Exploiting such a tragedy is a terrible way to begin the proceedings), raising his 12-year-old daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett), only for her and a friend named Katherine (Olivia Marcum) to disappear in the woods for three days. Upon being found, the girls start to behave strangely and even violently, and with very little doubt or medical examination or psychological analysis, the characters kind of collectively decide that the kids must be possessed by a demon. Apparently, they must have seen the original film, too, in order to make such a leap of logic-free faith in such a short amount of time and with so little effort.

The script's rush, perhaps, is so that Burstyn can return as Chris, who has become an expert on demonic possession and exorcism, as well as an estranged mother to her now demon-free daughter. There's little reason for Chris to be here (Even she points out that she wasn't in the room where the exorcism happened), and for as little as she does before basically exiting the story, it's almost as if the filmmakers know that, too.

The movie has such miniscule trust in its own characters, story, and method that forces Chris into it, only to cram in an excuse for her to leave, and jumps straight into the most formulaic way to bring the premise of the story to a conclusion—a group of people shouting prayers and incantations as cheap digital effects play out in the dark. The only real sense of doubt here is whether or not Green and company have a clue about any underlying rhyme or reason for their movie's basic existence.

This series, of course, has had a shaky history—from another dreadful sequel, to a surprisingly solid third installment, to a misguided attempt at a prequel that resulted in two different movies. The Exorcist: Believer might be the low point, though, if only on account of how inherently lazy it is on so many levels.

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