Asher Luberto
After four dreary sequels, it’s about time someone put an end to the Exorcist franchise. The series kicked off with a delightful nightmare that turned heads around the country, but then came a string of misfires that weren’t so much scary as terrifyingly silly, which seems to be a common theme amongst horror classics. You thought Texas Chainsaw Massacre was spooky? Here comes four more installments that are far less effective. Director David Gordon Green tries to hide this franchise’s sequel/reboot skeletons in the closet with The Exorcist: Believer, but he ends up adding one more corpse to a mountainous pile.
The film is a textbook example of how studios continue to churn out worthless reboots, taking game changers and stretching them into legacy sequels that bare none of the qualities that made the first entry a success. It doesn’t matter if the camera doesn’t glide, if the mood doesn’t chill or the art-house sensibilities are gone, as long as audiences are willing to pay for something with the logo on it, which leads us to more crummy films like this one.
There aren’t many similarities between Believer and The Exorcist. They both have possessed girls and that’s about it. The rest of this shameless cash grab from Blumhouse is chock full of the studio’s nasty visuals and excessively operatic shocks. Despite a restrained opening–in which Green introduces his protagonists–Believer quickly shifts into a jolt factory centered around grief.
Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.) lives with his daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett) on the outskirts of town, where they try to get over the loss of her beloved mother. On a foggy afternoon, Angela and her friend Katherine (Olivia O’ Neill) decide to wander into the forest for a little escape, but return two days later with no memory of their adventure. Uh oh! Looks like it’s time to call a priest.
Just like the heroine in 1973, the girls slowly start to experience body changes that are supposed to resemble puberty but are far worse than any menstrual cycle. Their bodies begin to wither, their skin turns pale and their eyes morph into golden orbs, which causes certain adults to assume possession while others doubt such paranormal possibilities. In low-lit rooms, they argue over whether this a natural occurrence or something different, with Victor on one side and a handful of characters (including Ellen Burstyn’s returning mother) on the other.
The script is most frequently about faith, hope or a lack of both, which of course culls inspiration from William Friedkin’s form and style directly reflecting these themes in the original. In a symbolic shot, a priest arrives at a manor cloaked in mist, luminated by a street lamp’s heavenly aura and swallowed by the night’s ethereal dusk–an allegorical exploration of the story’s interplay of light and dark.
Sadly, Green doesn’t have the ability to pull off these moments, which makes his motifs seem surface level as opposed to metaphorical. He continues to explore ideas of religion and spirituality, but seems far more interested in setting up the next death, rather than fleshing out any moral quandaries. He did the same thing with his Halloween movies, putting an emphasis on jump scares over atmosphere and substance.
Believer’s recycled feel suggests that maybe it’s time to leave our horror staples alone, for good. There’s no point in bringing these classics back from the dead when they are already startlingly alive, available to watch in streaming and still make us feel the way they did when they came out– even with remakes like this threatening to haunt their legacies.
Editor’s note: The disclaimer below refers to advertising posts and does not apply to this or any other editorial stories. LA Weekly editorial does not and will not sell content.
Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.