The Exorcist: Believer
Directed by David Gordon Green
Written by by Peter Sattler, David Gordon Green
Starring Leslie Odom Jr., Lydia Jewett, Olivia O’Neil, Ellen Burstyn
Runtime: 1 hour, 51 minutes
Rated R
In theaters October 6th

by Joe Carlough, Staff Writer

I’m something of a horror movie superfan: I’ve kept a spreadsheet of over 450 short horror movie reviews for my own reference since 2013, and I’ve been writing a zine series focused entirely on horror media since 2021 with my friend Gina Brandolino, a university professor of English, Medieval Studies, and Horror Films. In honor of The Exorcist’s 50 anniversary this year, we’ve just released our fifth issue, Gina and Joe Talk About: The Exorcist. To say I’ve been living in the world of The Exorcist the past few months would be an understatement. So what a treat it was when The Exorcist: Believer came up for review for MovieJawn. 

My excitement was short-lived, though, giving way to the frustration of writing about just another bad sequel cashing in on one of the greatest movies ever made–and one that’s already carrying the weight of two terrible prequels AND two terrible sequels. There’s a lot in The Exorcist: Believer to like, but unfortunately, the vast majority of the movie’s positive points occur in roughly the first half of the film before entering a steep descent into jump scares, long bouts of Hallmark-movie-esque speechifying, and a vague feeling of why is any of this happening? 

The film missteps right out of the gate, providing an updated backstory that takes the devil out of the Middle East and introduces us to the strife in Haiti, only the devil is acutely absent: the film presents us with the weight of an unbearable choice in place of a physical or spiritual demon, a decision I came back to again and again in the film: where is the demon that needs to be exorcized? The film finds itself back on steady ground quickly, though, with help from rock-solid acting and chemistry between leads Lydia Jewett as the to-be-possessed teenager Angela and Leslie Odom Jr. as her overprotective father. Tension builds in their relationship as she begins to pull away from his authority, and for roughly 45 minutes, the film builds a solid foundation in the well-trod path of teen scream films, giving us the delicate balance between strong bonds between Angela and her friends and the consequences of rebelling against your parents. David Gordon Green’s direction at this point is crisp and focused, the cinematography languorous and steady, reminiscent of the original movie and filmmaking from the 70’s in general. We see Angela and her friend Katherine, played well by Olivia Marcum, lie to each of their parents before disappearing into the woods to communicate with the dead. This is the highest peak the film reaches before it begins its spiral down into inanity. 

When the two girls eventually come home and the terror dawns on the families that something is not right, I found myself asking over and over again: where was the demon? How did they meet? Why were they possessed? A standard trope in possession films, it helps the viewer to know the demon, to be terrified of what’s to come, but The Exorcist: Believer let’s the initial possession take place off camera and in a matter of minutes, a truly poor choice for a movie that’s so entirely about demonic possession. As much as I want to resist just comparing this movie to the original, the first set the gold standard in possessions: by the time Regan was in full demon mode, we all knew just how scared we had to be. Meanwhile, The Exorcist: Believer speeds so quickly through the possession that they never stopped to tell me why that particular demon is found in the woods, nor why what these girls were doing was in any way dangerous. It was a real missed opportunity. 

As medical science fails the girls repeatedly, an ever-growing cast of religious and spiritual characters come out of the woodwork. Characters seem to change their long-held beliefs in a matter of moments, each character immediately willing to drop out of their everyday lives in order to be fully absorbed into the storyline. The lives of the characters were as simplistic as the lives of cartoon characters, as though when they’re not on camera, they simply don’t exist. Before long, the movie takes on something of an Ocean’s Eleven feeling, each spiritual leader, helpful neighbor, or friend of a friend is so unique and entirely different from each other that it seems preposterous that they would all know each other. After a few successful and well-timed jump scares, the most terrible thing that can happen in a horror movie began to happen: the audience around me began to laugh. The vulgarities of the demon, now inhabiting two girls, were constantly met with chuckles and jeers, and the animated graphics were often so cheesy and frankly odd that at one point I was worried a chorus of boos were about to begin. 

The exorcism itself was by far the lowest point in the movie, at best feeling more like a pastiche of all Exorcist films before it, at worst like a parody. Devoid of any tension, emotional resonance, or even terror, it was a noisy, chaotic affair, filled with so many extraneous characters I found myself sometimes forgetting who was who or why they were attending the exorcism at all. The action felt confusingly all-or-nothing: snap a neck here, sit powerlessly there, screaming now, lolling heads there. The demon in the original film was so incredibly focused, so reliant on a plan to take a child’s soul and torment those around here, that this helter skelter experience gave me the illusion this was the demon’s first attempt to possess anyone (spoiler alert: it wasn’t). That’s not a good way to feel during the crux of the film. I had not gone into this movie imagining I’d be cracking jokes about it to my neighbor during its most crucial moments.

That's all to say nothing of the lazy, low-hanging-fruit stereotypes: homeless men presented as depraved, lecherous crazies; paper-thin main characters who seemingly have no flaws; a magically incoherent group of people who have exactly the right esoteric knowledge to conquer centuries-old evils. On and on it goes. Ultimately, The Exorcist: Believer felt like a money grab focused on the 50th anniversary of one of the greatest horror movies ever made. I suppose Morgan Creek Productions hasn’t learned from the snafus surrounding Exorcist: The Beginning and Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist, two entirely unnecessary and frankly awful prequels put out just one year apart in the early 2000s. Then again, maybe they don’t need to learn anything, because as crummy a movie as The Exorcist: Believer is, it’ll surely be a smash at the box offices this October. Personally? I’d wait to see it until it's streaming somewhere.