Review: The Exorcist: Believer ⭐⭐
Generic possession horror film fails to live up to franchise name
Few films are as powerful as the late William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) in terms of terrifying audiences. Friedkin’s masterpiece has been imbued with a strange power that renders its two word title as enough to elicit a strong response from audiences. Thus, it is a powerfully attractive franchise on which to attempt to capitalise. What The Exorcist: Believer (2023) does is completely fail to live up to the power of the franchise name. With any luck, plans for future instalments will be reviewed post-haste because if this is the trajectory the franchise is heading in then it will need more than holy water and prayer to save it.
The film opens fairly well. We get a nice call back to the opening of the original film with dogs fighting, but that is effectively the end of any semblance of connection to the visual tone of the original. From there it is only the return of the legendary Ellen Burstyn as Chris MacNeill and the film’s title that serves to connect this to the horror classic of 1973.
The actors are all very game, the show talent and do their best with the fairly perfunctory story. Glaringly missing is the patience of the first film and the charisma of a character of Father Karris. The original was a deeply moving film beyond its horror. It raised questions and stimulated thought in its audience about faith, and it was also a deeply personal film which explored the man Father Damien Karras (who for my money is the actual titular character and not Max von Sydow). Believer has none of this.
There a lack of dread and fear, and the make-up detracts from any possible suspension of disbelief. I stress again, that the cast are clearly talented actors, but the world that director David Gordon Green and his cowriters create for them is lacking in depth. It seems that whatever magic they found when reigniting the Halloween franchise is missing here. At the very least it shows that the director is not able to recapture the tone of William Friedkin’s original and William Peter Blaty's director’s cut of The Exorcist III (1990).
The exorcism sequences are fairly standard for the genre. There are some good moments of emotion as the families battle to save their loved ones, but it is all fairly predictable. The multifaith approach is a novel idea, but was a little hammed up for my liking.
In the end, The Exorcist: Believer is a generic possession film that is not worthy of being the vehicle for reinvigorating a franchise built, in my opinion, on two excellent films in the original and the third instalment. What we have in the end, is a pretty cynical brand appropriation job. It is like buying the rights to Van Gogh's name, sticking it on motel room art and hoping people will accept it to be of the same quality.