The Exorcist: Believer
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 The promotional material isn't lying… this will question all your faith in whatever studio tries to handle continuing an iconic horror classic next.
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The Exorcist: Believer is a 2023 American supernatural horror film directed by David Gordon Green, who co-wrote the screenplay with Peter Sattler from a story by Scott Teems, Danny McBride, and Green. It's the sixth installment in The Exorcist franchise, and serves as a direct sequel to The Exorcist (1973). The film stars Leslie Odom Jr., Lidya Jewett, Olivia O‘Neill in her film debut, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, and Ann Dowd. Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair reprise their roles from the original film. Its plot follows a photographer who must confront the nadir of evil when his daughter and her best friend are possessed.
Plot
When his daughter, Angela, and her friend Katherine, show signs of demonic possession, it unleashes a chain of events that forces single father Victor Fielding to confront the nadir of evil. Terrified and desperate, he seeks out Chris MacNeil, the only person alive who's witnessed anything like it before.
Why It's NOT a Believer
- Much like Exorcist II: The Heretic, The Beginning, and Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, the main problem of the movie is that it doesn't stay true to the 1971 novel and the first film, and it feels rushed, redundant, and unnecessary.
- Despite this being an Exorcist movie, this movie looks and feels more like an imitator of the legion of Exorcist imitators than a true sequel that was supposed to represent a logical continuation of the first Exorcist film.
- The story is abysmal and also pulls in elements from The Exorcist knockoffs, which is extremely lazy. It also heavily lacks the surprises and unexpected moments that would have made this movie a lot more engaging, and this would dive even deeper into the next reason.
- Even the plot of this movie is shoddily presented to the point of giving viewers a sense of struggle.
- Despite the scariness of the original, this film somehow plays it way too safe, resulting in the lack of the scares that made the original so good as The Heretic did. There was a reason why the original was stomach-churning, one of them being how gradually Regan's physical and psychological condition deteriorated, and some of the things that she did while this happened. But here, Believer doesn't want to go the extra mile when it comes to the latter. Regarding the former, the deterioration of the two girls' conditions feels rushed and choppily put together, like the film wants to race ahead to an inevitable exorcism scene.
- The writing is much worse than the last two Exorcist movies.
- For some reason, there is a reference to patriarchy, which feels out of place for an Exorcist movie.
- Abysmal directing from David Gordon Green, who also directed the Halloween sequel trilogy, which despite the first movie in the sequel trilogy being good, it's still a red flag considering that not only did the sequel trilogy go downhill after Halloween Kills, but Halloween and The Exorcist isn't both the same thing.
- Sloppy dynamics that feel like they're just lazily recycled from prior Exorcist movies or built out of horror tropes that many are sick of by now.
- Ellen Burstyn's cameo in this movie is completely wasted, as she appears for only one scene in the film, and never really appears again. And it wouldn't have been THIS much of a problem had the film done something with her cameo. But no, this film does absolutely nothing with her cameo. You could remove the scene altogether and nothing about this movie would change.
- In fact, the only reason why she's here is because Ellen was offered a huge sum of money to fund a scholarship for a University.
- Similar to movies like The Smurfs, and its sequel, Jack and Jill, Foodfight!, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, The Emoji Movie, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Home Sweet Home Alone, Haunted Mansion (2023), Space Jam: A New Legacy, etc. There is blatant product placement in the form of YouTube, which was owned by Google.
- Abysmal ending: This not only undermines this movie's overall message but also sloppily reveals the twist at the last minute, where Lamashtu decides that his work is done once he tricks the parents into choosing a child sacrifice. The person who says the name will be one chosen to die rather than live. And because we don't know much about Katherine, it's no surprise that she's the one who dies and Angela is the one who lives.
- Much like Surf's Up 2: WaveMania of the Surf's Up series, and Space Jam: A New Legacy of the Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies franchise, it was too late to make another Exorcist movie, as the previous film came out over 18 years ago, and it was because of this reason that people stopped waiting for a sequel, so this sequel should have been released sooner!
- However, unlike Top Gun: Maverick, Bad Boys for Life (alongside Ride or Die), Bill & Ted Face The Music, Toy Story 3 (alongside the fourth movie), Candyman (2021), Finding Dory, The Godfather Part III (especially it's recut film The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone) Rocky Balboa (and the Creed films), The Color of Money, Incredibles 2, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Rescuers Down Under, Blade Runner 2049, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (alongside Jumanji: The Next Level), Scream (2022) (alongside the sixth movie), Evil Dead Rise, Saw X, Ghostbusters: Afterlife (alongside Frozen Empire), and Avatar: The Way of Water (all of which are far better movies), it doesn't even follow any of the techniques that made it a worthy decades-late sequel in the first place, and only exists to nostalgia-bait fans of the original Exorcist movie.
- Due to all of these problems listed here, this movie is not only a poor way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Exorcist, but also killed any hope of The Exorcist: Deceiver and its followup as those films were canceled following this film's negative reception.
Redeeming Qualities
- While unnecessary, it's nice to see The Exorcist back on the big screen after 18 years, although that won't make up for the film's flaws.
- Despite playing it safe, there are still some scares here and there.
Reception
The Exorcist: Believer received largely negative reviews from critics and audiences. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 22% of 249 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "The Exorcist: Believer earns points for trying to take the franchise back to its terrifying roots, but a lack of new ideas – and scares – make this an inauspicious start to a planned new trilogy." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 39 out of 100, based on 54 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale, the same as The Exorcist III and Exorcist: The Beginning, while those polled by PostTrak gave it a 61% positive score.
Owen Gleiberman, writing for Variety, said in his review: "The Exorcist: Believer, in its superficially competent and poshly mounted way, feels about as dangerous as a crucifix dipped in a bottle of designer water". David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter said: "Unlike Green's Halloween trilogy, which served up diminishing returns with each new installment, Believer condenses that downward trajectory into the first chapter" and called the film "hella disappointing". In Plugged In, Paul Asay praised the film for its theme of emphasizing the importance of faith and community in rescuing the oppressed. John Mulderig in the Catholic Review noted: "William Friedkin's Watergate-era picture ... was a fairly straightforward confrontation between Regan's tormentor and two Catholic priests. Driving away of the devil here, by contrast, takes on the qualities of a circus, thus promoting a syncretistic, humanistic and even vaguely anti-Catholic outlook that could be spiritually dangerous for anyone inclined to take it seriously. On the whole, however, this half-a-century-later follow-up is best dismissed as... chaotic schlock."
USA Today's Brian Truitt gave the film a score of three out of four. He noted Burstyn's limited screen time, writing: "Odom gets a meatier character arc than Burstyn did back in the day, and while her return isn't as integral to the story as Jamie Lee Curtis' was to the rebooted Halloween, Chris' appearance adds needed weight to the Believer narrative. With a formidable Believer and two more Exorcist movies in the pipeline, though, at least this franchise still has a prayer". Olly Richards of Empire felt differently about Burstyn's role: "The role feels gimmicky rather than essential and sets the film on a cheesier path of call-backs, winks, and attempts to one-up the original. It becomes a tribute act, its own personality shrinking in the shadow of a classic".
Stephanie Zacharek, in Time, notes, "As for Green's Exorcist: Believer, which starts out strong—evoking all the reasons demons in search of a body to possess can’t resist the hormonal lightning rod of adolescent girls—and ends in a dumb jumble of generic-looking zombie-girl Blumhouse special effects: I’ve already forgotten it. Odom is a terrific actor. But poor Ellen Burstyn. Long after refusing to appear in Exorcist II, she agrees to show up in this thing—as the older version of Chris, now the ultimate coastal grandma, dressed in floaty, flattering white scarves and ropes of crystal beads—only to get about 10 minutes of screen time, during which her character suffers a needless and stupid indignity. Though it’s not something she could have known some 47 years ago, Burstyn said yes to the wrong Exorcist sequel. If only she’d chosen the one with poetry in its soul.
Videos
External Links
The Exorcist: Believer at the Internet Movie Database
The Exorcist: Believer on Metacritic
The Exorcist: Believer on Rotten Tomatoes
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