When two girls disappear into the woods and return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, the father of one girl seeks out Chris MacNeil, who’s been forever altered by what happened to her daughter fifty years ago.
When director David Gordon Green took it upon himself to reignite the Halloween franchise with a new trilogy of films, fans were divided. Some thought he might be the one to breathe new life into a franchise that was once considered the holy grail of horror movies, but sadly, he proved he was not the chosen one as all three films, “Halloween,” “Halloween Kills,” and “Halloween Ends,” were unwarranted and a useless waste of time.
Not content with tarnishing the Halloween series, Mr. Green took the initiative and decided to take on another horror franchise, “The Exorcist.” While the first film is hailed as a classic, its sequel, “Exorcist II: The Heretic,” was a box office disaster, but thankfully, William Peter Blatty, the author of ‘The Exorcist’ novel that the first movie was based on, stepped up to the plate and returned to the fold and wrote and directed “The Exorcist III,” bringing back the disturbing ambiance and genuine scares that percolated throughout the original.
“The Exorcist: Believer” focuses on Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.), a photographer and single dad to his thirteen-year-old daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett). After school one day, Angela and her best friend, Katherine (Olivia O’Neill), leave school and walk into the woods to perform a séance in an attempt to contact Angela’s mother. The two girls disappear for three days but are eventually found safely. Not long after, both girls start to exhibit strange behavior and are eventually admitted to the hospital for observation.
Ann (Ann Dowd), Victor and Angela’s neighbor, is also a nurse at the hospital where the girls are being treated, and she believes that they are possessed. When she mentions it to Victor, he refuses to believe her, but Angela’s actions and being able to speak in tongues eventually sway his opinion. At Ann’s suggestion, he reaches out to Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), whose own daughter, Regan, went through a similar situation many years ago and asks for her help. She agrees, but when the demon inside Angela recognizes her, all hell breaks loose.
The problem with “The Exorcist: Believer” is that we don’t care about the characters. They are expendable. We are introduced to the two young girls and are expected to care about them simply because they are young and something truly terrible befalls them, but that in and of itself is not enough to justify what the film is hoping we will do. We need to care about the characters we see onscreen, and we are not given enough time with them beforehand to become acquainted with, so using music cues and melodramatic flashbacks isn’t enough to fulfill expectations.
Seeing Ellen Burstyn brought a smile to my face. Although her character serves no other purpose than to remind the audience that she went through similar circumstances a long time ago, the film could have managed without her and would have still been nothing more than a run-of-the-mill “Exorcist” knockoff. Possessed characters spew the same vile dialogue utilized in the original and look similar to Linda Blair’s Regan, so there really is nothing new here, only fresh faces and a present-day setting.
The fact that there are two more sequels in the works doesn’t bode well for Universal Pictures, as “Believer” did not perform well upon its release earlier this year. With David Gordon Green returning to direct both movies, I envision an outcome similar to the “Halloween” trilogy he made; they will both underperform and continue dividing the series’ fans while proving totally unnecessary. But the good news is that after Green is finished destroying the “Halloween” and “Exorcist” franchises, he will then continue his winning streak by remaking “Hellraiser,” and I know fans will jump for joy with that news.
Now available on Digital HD,
and on 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray™, and DVD December 19th
