The Exorcist: Believer: Movie Review

Cast: Leslie Odom Jr, Anne Dowd, Ellen Burstyn, Lidya Jewett, Olivia O'Neill
Director: David Gordon Green

The Exorcist: Believer had potential.

A truly frightening trailer that upped the demonic edges as two young girls were seemingly possessed after going missing had all the signs of making a Hallowe'en classic. But despite initially riffing on some of the Exorcist's original themes and imagery (dogs fighting in the sun), David Gordon Green's wannabe movie disappears in a puff of disappointment rather than becoming a classic.

When friends Angela and Katherine disappear and then reappear three days later 30 miles from where they were last seen, it soon becomes clear that their families are dealing with more than just a missing persons's case.

Especially when the girls start to display signs of possession.

The Exorcist: Believer wants desperately to be the next start for the Exorcist franchise, but based on this opener of the planned three films, it's on a highway to hell before it's even begun.

While its opening in Haiti toys with cliche, its 13 years later sequences that kickstart the film feel very much like a nod to the horror opening of The Black Phone in that children go missing, people are terrified and no one really knows what's ahead.

But while The Exorcist: Believer has an intriguing anti-Catholic message throughout, preferring to lean heavily into the people banding together can do anything mantra, it really does little new with the idea other than offering a double possession.

It utterly squanders Ellen Burstyn and his relationship to Regan and it can't be a coincidence that one of the possessed girls bears an uncanny resemblance to Linda Blair's demon-fuelled youngster. Yet that's also half of the problem of The Exorcist: Believer - it leans into the moments of the 1973 epic and leaves anyone who's a fan of the original feeling like it's just a shallow hollow retread in parts.

On the positive side, the possession sequences are well executed and the intrigue early on is well-realised. However, when the film carries on into excessive territories it feels rote and predictable, bordering on unoriginal and banal instead of blood-curdling and demonic, and with characters who should know better, doing incredibly dumb things.

Despite some jump scares, including one visual cue that will be infamous to anyone with a cursory knowledge of William Friedkin's original, The Exorcist: Believer isn't enough to scare up a start for a new franchise, let alone enough to offer some decent horrors for 2023.