With recent films like The Witch, The Babadook and Hereditary, a term has been thrown around to describe these entries as “elevated horror”, which explores and experiments with the artistic uses of horror. While the term feels like a cheap way to praise the genre beyond the mainstream likes of Scream, one could see the late William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, now fifty years old, as an early example of the American elevated horror movie. Exploring themes of faith and good versus evil, Friedkin’s film never gave out easy answers and ends on a somewhat tragic note, at least in the original theatrical version.
Despite its filmmaking that mixed documentary with devilish special effects, The Exorcist became just another horror franchise with diminishing sequels, with the exception of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist III, a fascinating, if compromised piece of detective horror. And now, we have a new Exorcist by director/co-writer David Gordon Green, who does exactly what he did with his Halloween trilogy, which is to make a direct sequel to the original and thus ignoring all subsequent installments.
Thirteen years have passed since photographer Victor (Leslie Odom Jr) has lost his faith in God since his wife’s death, while raising their daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett) on his own. One day after school, Angela ventures into the woods with her Baptist best friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill), both of which go missing for a few days. After being discovered and left traumatized, Angela and Katherine start acting weirdly as their parents come to the conclusion that they are demonically possessed, and so they seek the help of Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), who’s been forever altered by what happened to her daughter fifty years ago.
For the first half of The Exorcist: Believer, there is some compelling stuff going on, from Odom Jr delivering an emotional performance as a man going through a crisis of faith, starting with the sudden departure of his wife and eventually trying to scientifically understand what is happening to her daughter. Along with the Baptist family whose daughter is also going through the same problematic transition, you have two belief systems somewhat clashing with each other. However, halfway through you are reminded that you are watching a legacy sequel to one of the most influential horror films ever made and that’s where Believer falls apart.
When David Gordon Green rebooted Halloween in 2018, it was a successful continuation of the ideas of John Carpenter’s original, in which Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode was trying to move forward from the evil of Michael Myers but must confront it when it returns. In the case of Believer has many callbacks to the original including bringing back Burstyn’s Chris MacNeil in a role that is not only non-essential to the main narrative, but contradicts who she was back in 1973 by making her an author that exploited her daughter’s demonic suffering.
Once we get the climatic exorcism, performed by various characters, none of whom are technically exorcists, this falls into a similar problem that all the other Exorcist sequels have, and in fact, several other films that are about exorcisms. While the original had its outlandish moments of special effects that showed the possessed Regan rotating her head, it never went too operatic and silly, something that Believer just embraces to horrible effect, despite Lidya Jewett and Olivia O’Neill really committing to their performances. Although William Peter Blatty, who came from a comedy background, brought subtle moments of humor in the original that took the subject matter, it is hard to say if Gordon and his co-writers are trying to funny in places, not least with some characters and their religious belief, which can come off as cringy.
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