Rent The Exorcist: Believer (2023)

Not that bad .... not that good - The Exorcist: Believer review by NP

It takes verve to helm a sequel/reboot to a film so horrific and controversial that it was banned for over 10 years in the UK. To match it in terms of reputation, you might have to risk making something so frightening that it runs the risk of being banned for a further 10 years. Either that or offer something new to the franchise.

David Gordon Green, who directed the recent Halloween Trilogy, has bitten the bullet and gone with this. At the time of writing, any hopes he had of handling a further planned trilogy – or if there will be a trilogy at all – are up in the air; Exorcist Believer has met with hostile reviews and disappointing box office receipts.

Making a mainstream film that genuinely shocks people is, in my view, near impossible these days, when people are encouraged to be offended by so many things. Also, a big company like Universal would doubtless like as wide a demographic as possible for this, so nothing too hostile has been allowed. In other words, the project was doomed before it started. Nothing compares to the original. Even as far back as 1977, and the first ill-fated sequel, something entirely different was produced. At least, if you’ll forgive me, that had balls; this doesn’t really.

We go through familiar Exorcist beats here. The concept has been the subject of many possession films over the years, some a good deal worse than this, and others rather better. It’s a mixed bag to be sure. The two girls at the centre of it all play their roles as well as they can be expected to do, but their progressive make-up is increasingly silly, and we cease to know them in the way we got to know Regan all these decades ago. Equally, there’s something vaguely comical when we have them both going through the throes of their possession, all tongues and grimacing, like a pair of gurning cabbage patch kids. That said, often in these kinds of chillers, ‘troubled’ children come across as petulant and pandered to – at least we’re spared that.

Of the two families, widower Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) isn’t easy to warm to. Not very neighbourly, and not very considerate to anyone other than his daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett), it’s only through his suffering do we have any empathy for him. The second girl, Katherine West (Olivia O'Neill) is less central to things, and her parents are virtually superfluous to events.

Things begin promisingly as the two youngsters venture into a forest to perform a séance to contact Angela’s dead mother, and are not seen for three days. When they do turn up, they display increasing symptoms of possession. After this, things lose their way a bit as more characters are introduced – including Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) from the original, who has a sticky time of it, mainly due to Victor’s extraordinary decision to allow the 90-year-old woman to face the horrors alone. The resultant exorcism is drawn out and follows the beats of the original, but far less effectively.

I don’t think this production is anywhere as near as bad as some say; neither is it particularly good. There’s a chance that, like the Halloween Trilogy, future instalments would add elements to make this Chapter One of a far more fulfilling experience, but as a standalone film, Exorcist: Believer is a victim, not of demonic possession, but of mainstream cinema’s apparent inability to make anything truly unnerving for fear upsetting people in today’s fragile world.

Believe - The Exorcist: Believer review by RP

When the original book came out. It was a sensation. When the film came out it was a sensation. I have it on DVD and the extended version and it still works. The films that followed never quite hit home but a sequence in one, the nurse walking across the corridor followed by.....oh the chills. So naturally we should be cynical about this film. It will never be able to hold onto the coat tails of the original. After all we live in times where everybody is possessed. Every bill we receive fills us with shock and fear. Every person who is supposed to help us feels possessed by greed. The past is literally rewritten so as not to shock us with the attitudes of the past. So how can a film like this manage to survive without us just dismissing it.

The acting is brilliant and so too are some of the speeches. The introduction of a couple of old characters does feel good. But it stands and falls by the belief that those affected and in need of exorcism are genuine. Here the young actresses are just wonderful. The adults around them give a fine supporting belief. Yes we should be cynical and yes the film will never live up to the original. But is it a good scary and entertaining film? I thoroughly enjoyed it. For me the fear or everyday life scares me more. But that doesn't mean I can't appreciate a good horror.