Movie Review: 'The Exorcist: Believer'

The Exorcist Believer (2023)

Directed by David Gordon Green

Written by David Gordon Green, Peter Sattier

Starring Leslie Odom Jr, Ann Dowd, Ellen Burstyn, Jennifer Nettles

Release Date October 6th, 2023

Published October 9th, 2023

The Exorcist Believer stars Leslie Odom Jr. as Victor Fielding, a single father and photographer. Victor's wife died in child birth while the couple were traveling in Haiti some 13 years ago. Angela (Lidya Jewett), Victor's now 13 year old daughter, appears to be a relatively good student, follows the rules, rarely finds trouble. Then, one day after school, Angela doesn't come home. What we know, that Victor doesn't know, is that Angela and her best friend, Katherine (Olivia Marcum), have decided to go into the woods to see if they can contact Angela's late mother. Then, the girls vanished.

After three agonizing days for Victor and for Katherine's parents, Miranda (Jennifer Nettles) and Tony (Nortbert Leo Butz), the girls are found hiding in a farmhouse not far from their school. The girls believe that they have only been gone for a few hours and they cannot account for the three days they've been missing. Nothing appears to be physically out of sorts with the girls but, soon after returning home, they are slowly descending into madness. Angela starts convulsing and cursing at her father and Katherine soon after follows suit.

Both girls soon end up back in the hospital where they had been treated and released in the immediate aftermath of their disappearance. This time however, no one knows what could be wrong with either girl. They have the same symptoms and they present the exact \same way. Both girls appear to be possessed by demons and Victor, not being religious, has no idea what to do. Luckily, Victor's neighbor is a nurse, (Ann Down) and when she sees the state of Angela as she is going to the hospital, she leaps into action.

Through Ann, we are reintroduced to Kris O'Neil (Ellen Burstyn). Luckily for Victor, she lives in driving distance of his home. In the years since she witnessed the aftermath of her daughter Ragan's exorcism, Kris O'Neill dedicated her life to hiding her child from the world. This works for a little while, but when she joins this story, Kris and her daughter haven't spoken in several years. Kris has written more than one book about her daughter's possession. She has unique insight into the rituals and she may be the person who knows how to rescue the children.

And then, Kris gets stabbed in both eyes and is out of the movie. Honestly, it's as if Ellen Burstyn had a plane to catch and was simply padding her retirement years with the biggest paycheck she can get her hands on. A woman of her age and dignity should not have to waste her time playing a character who exists solely for name value and nebulous familiar references to things from previous versions of The Exorcist franchise, but here we are. It would be pathetic if it were not for how dignified Burstyn is, even as she's rushing out of the door of the movie as soon as she can.

Director David Gordon Green is not a great director. He's proficient in technical aspects of filmmaking. He gets the basics right. His shots are clean and assured, and his story proceeds at a good pace. He gets good performances from good actors and there is nothing particularly embarrassing on display. It's still not a good movie but it's hard to say that it is poorly made, it most assuredly isn't poorly made. Rather, the idea is deeply flawed. The horror subgenre that The Exorcist created, the demonic possession horror movie, is flawed in and of itself.

What is the goal of the demon? What does the demon hope to gain from possessing the souls of two teenage girls? What is the arc for anyone in the movie? Victor goes from being a great single dad to ending up a great single dad whose seen a few things he wishes he'd never seen. The teenagers in the movie aren't changed by their experience. I would argue that the movie cheats by giving the victims convenient amnesia about the horrific trauma they endure. That's not a character arc.

The demon doesn't have an arc, it doesn't appear to have a goal. It doesn't really need a goal, I guess, it's a demon, it's evil, that's all it really needs. That said, the same problem I had with the original The Exorcist persists here, what goal does the demon have and how does this possession get them closer to that goal? The original posits a demon whose goal is to be as obscene and profane as possible by enacting through a very young girl some horrifying behavior and disgusting and deeply disturbing profanities.

Profaning the innocent is, I guess, enough of a goal for a demon. It's not a great goal for a movie villain to have. It appears very easy to achieve this goal but what long term implications are there? The new movie isn't nearly as profane as the original. There is little to be shocked by in The Exorcist Believer. The girls are rude and angry and covered boils and sores. They look like Regan from the original The Exorcist and that's about it. The power of Christ Compels you, Bob's your uncle, movie is over.

There is a glaring, despairing mediocrity at the heart of The Exorcist Believer. Everything you see in the movie is fine. The performances are uniformly professional, Leslie Odom Jr is a stand out, the direction is professional. It's all fine. But there is nothing remotely transcendent. There is nothing special about The Exorcist Believer. It is a rote, clockwork movie where all the expected beats get played, there are very few, if any surprises, and then, the movie ends just as forgettable as it began.

When movies are made with the sole purpose of capitalizing on a well known piece of intellectual property, there is a soullessness to it that is hard to overcome. No one who worked on The Exorcist Believer did anything to add to the movie. Everyone involved did their part and called it a day. They made a working widget and that's all it is. It's a movie that happens for a while and ends without having made or left any kind of impression on the audience. If you just want a movie to happen in front of you, you could do worse than The Exorcist Believer but why would you want to just have a movie to happen in front of you?

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