The Exorcist: Believer
Lidya Jewett and Olivia Marcum star in THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER. (Photo: Universal Pictures)
One of the reasons The Exorcist is such a horror classic is that it established a template often imitated but rarely duplicated, even by its own eponymous sequels. It remains a standard-bearer 50 years later.
Now we have The Exorcist: Believer, which marks the latest effort from director David Gordon Green (Halloween) to mine iconic genre material and reset the franchise to bridge past and present.
Regardless of its intentions as a reverential follow-up, however, the film doesn’t possess nearly the same ability to provoke or frighten. It’s more of a copycat than a legitimate continuation.
The film marks the first in a planned trilogy for Green, whose screenplay ignores any prior sequels and hearkens back to the novels of William Peter Blatty, who adapted his own work for William Friedkin’s 1973 Oscar-winner.
The story kicks into gear with the disappearance of 13-year-old friends Angela (Lidya Jewett) and Katherine (Olivia Marcum). A frantic search ensues involving authorities and both girls’ parents.
From there, the focus shifts to Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.), Angela’s single father and a Haitian immigrant whose faith has been shaken by his wife’s death years earlier. “You religious types are all alike,” he rants to a nosy neighbor (Ann Dowd). “It is a myth, made up by people to explain things they will never understand.”
When the youngsters are found, they each begin exhibiting strange behavior symptomatic of possible demonic possession. That prompts Victor to track down Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), the mother from the first Exorcist film who might be his only hope.
As movies about bedeviled children go, this one follows a mostly familiar playbook, struggling to earn a deeper and more sustained terror like its predecessor. The slow-burn exposition feels like a waiting game for the inevitable climax rather than a steady accumulation of suspense through emotional investment.
It improves as it goes along, tightening its focus on the connection between the girls’ affliction and organized belief systems, plus strengthening its ties to the source material — especially with Burstyn reprising her role after all these years, just like Jamie Lee Curtis did in Green’s Halloween trilogy.
The film generates some haunting imagery in the third act as the conflict between the real world and the spirit world intensifies. But while the power of Christ might compel it, Believer fails to breathe meaningful new life into the mythology.
Rated R, 111 minutes.