Exorcist: Believer

Review: written Jan 2024

One half a good movie, one half of a bad one

There has not yet been a sequel / prequel to The Exorcist that has come close to the original. While the original was a lot less about demons and pea soup puke than you might remember, and a lot more about the nature of faith and about the relationships between people, subsequent sequels have largely got these elements not quite right, and focussed on the wrong things.

So here we are, with a reboot that starts out right, but falls ultimately into the latter camp. Playing out as a new story, Victor and his wife Sorrenne are in Haiti when an earthquake leaves the pregnant Sorenne injured and Victor is presented with the choice to save either the mother or the child. Cut to 13 years later, and the daughter and the father appear to have a strong relationship, but she is ever-curious about her deceased mother, and along with her best friend goes off in the woods to perform a séance to contact her mother. 3 days later the girls appear, unaware that so much time has passed. But they have come back different - not quite themselves. They start to show ever increasing evidence they might have brought something back with them.

So how does this new effort do? Well, decidedly mixed. The first act of the movie manages to evoke the original in good ways, by emphasising a sense of realism and naturalistic acting, building what kind of feels like real relationships - giving what feels like good groundwork to evoke the same sense of real people encountering something extraordinary, prompting crossroads of faith to be navigated. As the ‘creepiness’ begins, some Exorcist-borrowed techniques give the hoped for frisson of uneasiness and hairs standing on end… but by the start of the second half it all starts to unravel.

The unravelling happens as we realise that the movie has little new to offer, copying the superficial elements of the original, while never understanding how to use them. Tricks and shots that were once original and thought provoking, are now little more than well worn tropes, perhaps even cliches. The idea of two girls sharing the possession is intriguing and a glimpse of originality – but mostly wasted as a device. Perhaps the worst misstep comes through the idea of widening the act of exorcism to a multi-faith exercise. It feels like a woefully misjudged attempt to ‘modernise’ the franchise, but confuses complexity for ambiguity, with characters reading the lines, rather than leaving you to read between the lines. It leaves the climax confused, with too many characters, and with little emotional import as a result. Finally, the movie hampers itself through its attempts to link to the original, wanting to have its cake and eat it – be an original fresh story, but also be a sequel to the first. It’s ultimately disappointing as both, despite some (wasted) cameos.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched the original Exorcist, but I watched it again recently to remind myself of just how effective and clever it actually was. The comparison this movie forces you to make with the original unfortunately only makes me wish I hadn’t bothered watching this supposed reboot, despite some initial glimpses of what might have been.