There aren’t a lot of films with the legacy of The Exorcist. And while there have been sequels and spin-offs, nothing produced has managed to reach the heights of horror the original did in 1973. The Exorcist: Believer, a direct sequel to the 1973 film, does an admirable job of recreating the themes and feelings of the original but ultimately falls short and treads familiar and well-trodden ground.
Set in present day, The Exorcist: Believer begins with a flashback to the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. Victor Fielding, a photographer, and his pregnant wife Sorenne are travelling in Port-Au-Prince are caught up in the devastation and Victor has to make the impossible choice of saving his wife or unborn child.
Thirteen years later, in 2023, Victory and his daughter Angela live an ordinary life in Georgia. Victor is lonely and bored, taking family portraits for a living and Angela is a teenager wishing she knew her mother. She and her religious friend at school, Katherine, make a plan to head into the woods and try to speak with the spirit of Angela’s dead mother and…you can see where this is going.
The Exorcist: Believer
After the girls don’t arrive home, Victor and Katherine’s parents begin searching and with the police involved, fear the worst. Three days later, both Angle and Katherine resurface, having lost time and not knowing what occurred. From here, things start to get spooky and supernatural. We witness both girls’ possession and their mental and physical decline as the demonic beings begin to take over.
Victor is sceptical of spirituality and the supernatural and dismisses any notion that his daughter has been possessed, instead opting to admit her to a psychiatric facility. It’s not until his nosey next-door neighbour, nurse and ex-nun Ann gives him a book written by Ellen Burstyn’s Chris MacNeil that Victor opens his mind to the possibilities.
The Exorcist: Believer is most successful in the first half of the film. The sequence in Haiti and the girl’s disappearance are harrowing and offer audiences a different kind of horror, one that’s palpable and sits uneasily in the pit of your stomach. Once the girls are found and their possession begins, things move a little too quickly and the film enters well-trodden territory that fails to scare or surprise.
Victor, played by Leslie Odom Jr., is a stoic and reasonable man and his disbelief at the notion of demonic possession rings true. However, his turn to a believer is too rapid and too easy for it to be believable. Sure, his daughter and her friend look possessed and sound possessed, but his character is set up to be the voice of reason and to reject the idea that demons can walk the earth. Similarly, once the girls are possessed, the coming together of the main characters for the exorcism feels too neat and too simple.
The exorcism itself also pales in comparison to the 1973 original, in spite of having two possessed girls rather than one. There’s a missed opportunity to dial up the terror and horror with the focus instead being on people coming together and faith overcoming all odds. Oddly, The Exorcist: Believer feels overly preachy and even though it brings together multiple faiths and belief systems seems to heavily lean on the notion of the Christian God being the one true deity.
I can’t fault the actors’ performances, as each of the main cast brings their character to life and brings something interesting to the table. However, they’re let down by the script and narrative which never really offers anything beyond surface-level observations about faith and humanity. A late-stage plot twist provides some additional tension and narrative heft but it’s never capitalised on and becomes a bit of a footnote.
While it’s clever to tie this film back to the original and it’s great to see Ellen Burstyn on-screen reprising her role, she is woefully underused and sidelined. What could have been a great addition to the cast feels like bad fan service and a cameo that could have been much more important than it ended up being. Films shouldn’t be beholden to what came before as that can be just as damaging as pointless easter eggs, but Burstyn’s appearance in The Exorcist: Believer veers far closer to the latter which is a real shame.
Overall, The Exorcist: Believer squanders a good premise in favour of jump scares and treading over the same territory as the original did 50 years ago. It’s not all that scary nor does it have much new to say and instead seems to want to pay homage to the original by attempting to recreate it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really succeed.
The Exorcist: Believer is an okay film that skirts the edges of interesting ideas but never fully commits to anything long enough to explore them properly. Solid performances elevate what is a shaky script and lazy premise but can’t make The Exorcist: Believer better than just okay.
Leo Stevenson attended a screening of The Exorcist: Believer as a guest of Universal.
