The Exorcist: Believer review: What possessed a director to make this?

Exorcism and Exorcist films are two different things.

While movies about possession were around long before William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin’s 1973 horror classic, few felt so grand or captured the public imagination in the same way as The ExorcistIts direct supporters. The themes of exorcist films have been much more expansive than those in their cousins’ genres. They cover topics that are far beyond the demon activity they center their story around. They’ve been about loss of faith, technology versus the supernatural, collective fear and societal decline, and even the evils of colonialism. But Belief in the Exorcist, David Gordon Green’s 2023 Exorcist movie, takes the series in the opposite direction, tightening its focus to possession only. Green, along with co-writer Peter Sattler, have stripped the series to its essentials and created the dullest, most uninspired version yet. The ExorcistA regular exorcism flick is imaginable.

The Exorcist is a new series. You Believe doesn’t center on an exorcist at all. Victor Fielding is the main character in the film. He’s the father-of-one of Angela, Lidya Jewett (who gets possessed with Katherine Olivia Marcum). They lie to their parents about what they plan to do that evening, and then venture off to a house in the woods where they perform a seance to talk to Angela’s dead mother. The seance goes horribly wrong, we’re told, but not really shown. The girls pop up three days later, covered with cuts and acting strangely — one girl turning lights on and off, the other shouting in the middle of church.

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That’s more or less the last time the girls get to be real characters in the movie. Instead of focusing solely on the possession and its victims You Believe largely tracks Victor as he runs all over town trying to figure out what’s wrong with his daughter, then trying to find people of various faiths to exorcise her.

The iconic scenes of the first movie are gone, such as priests or doctors investigating Regan while she makes increasingly vulgar remarks to shock those around her. Or profane God and his church. Those are replaced by momentary glimpses of the girls crawling around on the floor like regular children, making growling noises, cursing briefly, or telling people facts the girls couldn’t possibly know. Even the other characters in the movie don’t seem too terribly disturbed by this tame behavior.

Green inserts flashes of some awful-seeming, more twisted version of possession — the black-and-white vision that filled advertisements ahead of the movie. But we never see that version of the story come to fruition — there are only snippets of it, set off by blasts of music. It’s hard to know how these inserts relate to the movie’s plot, but as it stands, they feel like windows into a better, scarier, and more interesting version of the movie, and completely out of step with the version we actually got. The minor hints of demonic activity all build toward an exorcism that’s the worst and most damning part of You Believe.

It isn’t particularly surprising that You Believe’s biggest issue is its exorcism scene. That’s been true of every entry in the series since the first. Exorcist movies have treated exorcisms scenes like obligations. They are often grafted on set-pieces, bordering on ridiculous, and appear out of the blue. That’s a problem in its own right, but it’s a better problem to have than boredom. What makes the series great and unique is what surrounds these exorcisms — challenging, thoughtful movies. You Believe’s greatest sin isn’t that it all leads to an exorcism, but rather that the exorcism it builds to is boring. The movie is 90 minutes of bland buildup to a scene that’s somehow even more generic and less exciting than what came before it.

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The spirit possessing the girls never identifies itself, and because the movie focuses more on the parents than the girls, we never actually understand how much danger they’re in, or what the stakes are. Although the spirit does some naive things, its actions are never frightening or dangerous. The majority of the exorcism consists of flashing lights, revealing the dark, deep secrets of parents who are not being told, such as how Victor wished his wife would have survived rather than his unborn daughter. It never feels like a supernatural evil is at work in the room or threatening anyone’s life at all. It reads more like an awkward family argument or minor confrontational therapy. It’s commendable that Green completely drops the standard cookie-cutter tropes and tenets of these kinds of scenes from other rote exorcism movies. He has no replacements.

Green appears to be uncomfortable with all the things that make an Exorcist film an Exorcist. Pazuzu the evil instigator at the core of the franchise is conspicuously missing from the film. Green’s refusal to acknowledge religion in general, and particularly Catholicism, is even more shocking.

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Belief in The ExorcistIt is repeatedly mentioned that possession and demons are found in almost every religion. Victor also needs to seek out a wide range of religious leaders and priests to cleanse Angela. But again, no specifics make their way into Green and Sattler’s script. This is a misguided effort to include a broader cultural range, and it undermines the core appeal of this series. It has always used Catholic symbols as a way to focus on important life questions. Exorcists are built upon a particular identity and tradition. You Believe The series also loses the unique scariness that makes it so scary.

One of the worst victims of this series flattening is also a member of You Believe’s primary selling points: Ellen Burstyn, who starred in the original ExorcistYou can also find out more about the following: Chris MacNeil, her character from the film is reprised by actress Jennifer MacNeil. But she’s brought back like the movie’s only religious icon, seemingly to add legitimacy to the ideas of universal evil and universal faith, and the claim that the only true solution to any of these problems is using exorcism rituals from all cultures.

The approach that makes You Believe The movie feels like an exorcist film after God, which suggests everyone shares a generic form of faith. But that approach makes the movie’s evil feel equally generic. You Believe It has broadened its worldview so that God, good, and faith have no meaning.

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Green attempts to make the show more than God. You Believe And its evil also feels out of date. Without Pazuzu, or some similar entity with a clear, malevolent desire to cause suffering, the movie’s version of evil lacks personality and true terror. And without God, there’s nothing to profane, no mores to cross or people left to startle. Without a shocking exorcism scene, or sacred rituals to pervert or perform, this movie doesn’t even feel as scary as any random horror movie about a child’s death. The ExorcistIt was horrifying because it made the innocent innocence of children into a form of insult against God. The evil of the act was not tempered by the religious tradition or God’s magnificence. You Believe gives up the series’ existential heft in favor of pulling our sympathy with the random suffering of children.

The name of this film was not known until the release of this latest movie. The Exorcist The weight of the inscription was significant. Although its value as a mark of quality could be questioned, it was never questioned as a signal of ambition. The original Exorcist, the series has provided some of American cinema’s best and most interesting artists with space to ruminate on faith and evil. You Believe lacks the ambition that’s meant to define an Exorcist movie. It’s almost as if the film made this statement by accident. Belief in The ExorcistWe must hold fast to our belief forever.

Belief in The ExorcistOn October 6, the movie will be in cinemas.