Bite-sized Boo: ‘THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER’ is possessed by bad filmmaking

Preston Barta // Film Critic

THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER

Rated R, 111 min.
Now playing in theaters nationwide.

I wish there were good news to report, but David Gordon Green’s latest legacy sequel is another pointless dud. The Exorcist: Believer, starring Leslie Odom Jr. and Jennifer Nettles, shows promise in its first half as a character play. 

It centers on two girls (Lidya Jewett and Olivia O’Neill) who disappear into the woods and return three days later without memory of what happened to them. Soon, the girls show signs of possession, and their families go looking for the characters of the original Exorcist film.

However, once Ellen Burstyn enters the film, Believer twists its head too far. Any smells of a fresh experience are quickly swatted away in favor of a film that operates like every other possession movie, only this one has no shakes and is incredibly tame. How this movie is rated R is a mystery. Once again, Green (the new Halloween trilogy) misunderstands what makes the original compelling and scary. 1973’s The Exorcist made viewers feel all the shock, fear, and nausea within by embracing silence and not relying on humor to dispel nervous energy. It was raw, nasty and, best of all, haunting. Believer‘s happenings fall away as soon as you exit. 

While there are sprinkles of intrigue with the exploration of cultural practices outside of Catholicism and Christianity helping cast the Devil out of the girls, as well as one genuinely good scare at the midpoint, this is a soulless installment that’s not going to generate much of an appetite for a new generation of films.

Grade: D