The Exorcist (1973) is a monumental film in the horror genre. While by today’s standards, the pacing can be off-putting, the overall film really stands tall, especially during its climatic exorcism scene. Universal and director David Gordon Green (Halloween 2018 / Halloween Kills / Halloween Ends) try to recapture that magic and try to pull The Exorcist into the legacy sequel craze. Unfortunately, they missed the mark in a significant way.
The story of The Exorcist: Believer follows Victor after having to choose between saving the life of his wife or daughter. We then pick up thirteen years later, and the daughter Angela and friend Katherine go out into the woods to try and talk to spirits. They turn up after disappearing for three days, but something is amiss. The two friends are possessed by something dark and deadly. Victor’s belief and mental health are tested to the limits as we go on a journey to exorcize the demon out of the girls. It’s a pretty standard cut-and-dry exorcism movie.
That’s not to say that there’s nothing worth taking away from The Exorcist: Believer after the mostly forced emotional beginning with Victor having to choose not to land at all. But when we pick up with Angela and Katherine sneaking off into the woods. The guttural fear of a parent when the children go missing is crushing. This is followed by some really delightfully subtle scares and even some jump scares that managed to get some jumps out of the audience.
It’s when we start to get deeper into the possession and story that things take a turn to the dull. At times, it feels like they are filling time with flashes of nonsense on the screen. Not to mention The Exorcist Believer’s biggest sin: it’s an attempt to shoehorn in some legacy sequel stuff that just feels forced. If you are going to push the legacy sequel stuff into it, you need to have those characters matter. But the way they just use Chris MacNeil ( portrayed by Ellen Burstyn) and Regan MacNeil ( portrayed by Linda Blair) feels like a waste. Not only are they thrown to the sideline, but they feel inconsequential in the story as a whole.
After spending twenty minutes building up this grand return to be treated like that, The Exorcist: Believer would have been better suited just to move on and not dabble with events from the past. Especially when you look at previous legacy sequels like Scream V and VI or the most recent Saw X. They bring back these much-loved characters and give them something to do, and in some cases, center the story on them passing the torch. But when you approach it like Halloween Kills, which was directed by David Gordon Green as well, and sideline your legacy character to the hospital and waste that potential, it’s better left out of it to focus on the crucial aspects.
The big focus, other than the forced legacy sequel stuff, is the big exorcism scene, which takes up roughly twenty-five minutes of the mostly two-hour runtime. It’s almost like someone watched The Exorcist and just said double it. The Exorcist: Believe exorcism scene is one of the more boring scenes in the entire film. There were no genuine scares or even stakes at play. One choice had to be made by the parents, but the way they just play it off diminishes the entire scene.
Then The Exorcist: Believer tries to play off this overtly depressing ending, in which the characters we spent almost two hours with deal with life after the fact. But when your whole movie doesn’t land well, an ending like this just feels like nothing. It’s a shame because it had a mostly decent setup that set up this house of cards to come slowly tumbling down.
The Exorcist: Believer loses sense of itself so quickly that, as a viewer, I was left dumbfounded by the film and its ability to throw characters by the wayside so rapidly and for them to expect some type of emotional response that was just not there. This is very unfortunate because the performances put on by Angela (Lidya Jewett) and Katherine (Olivia O’Neill) are quite good, save for the overly-tuned demonic voice.
I find those work better when you can hear the essence of the person still left inside, but here it was, just poorly “Additional Dialogue Replacement (ADR)” of a deep voice. However, the rest of the cast feels pretty bland and unresponsive. The score itself also falls into the bland, with the only highlight being when Chris MacNeil shows up and we get a brief glimpse at what was the iconic The Exorcist theme.
The Exorcist: Believer is just blatantly a boring movie. Between poor pacing, forcing the legacy sequel craze stuff, and some lacklustre scares, it feels like the film lost itself. So much so that its melancholy ending happens, it doesn’t move the needle at all. We need to move on from these legacy sequels, especially if they have nothing to say.
