Movie Review: "The Exorcist: Believer" (2023)

I watched this film on the night of Wednesday 11th October, 2023

Though it might be suggested that I am a purist of the original movie from the 70s, I am also very open to new and exciting ideas. Unfortunately, what I am looking for in a fresh new horror movie just was not realised by this shaky sequel. Of course, it still was not all doom and gloom for David Gordon Green's attempt, but I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that there were more things wrong with this movie than right. From no atmosphere to plot-holes, from continuity errors to weird editing, though the film may have been entertaining on a base level - there was just so much I could not shake off. Leaving no after effect that the first viewing of the original movie left, The Exorcist: Believer is more of a let-down than I had initially imagined it would be.

There are some major plot-holes in this film which separated it from the previous film for me. For example: we have no idea (unless you're a nerd like me and tried to figure it out and got to Ancient Akkadia and then had to look it up) who the demon is or why it's possessing the children. We have that weird voodoo scene on the mother at the beginning of the movie, but why would an Ancient Akkadian demon possess two young girls in a forest in Georgia through a ritual of an entirely different religion?

The previous demon of the original movie is something we can understand as the priest takes a journey to Iraq and we get to see the origin story of the demon that will possess Regan and we also know why it's happening. Unfortunately, unless you are really into your Ancient Akkadian literary and religious history, you won't realise that this demon is basically the counterpart to the original movie's demon. It makes the film a little flaky and due to that, I deduct a mark.

Another plot hole is the death of the priest. The priest who comes back after a change of heart dies because he touched the girls on the head with the rosary after it was already said that the girls should not be touched whilst possessed. As a member of the church, a) would he not know this already? and b) if he lived and tried to return to the church he would be shunned for disobeying his superiors, so what exactly was he supposed to be doing here? He seemed like a filler character and the movie would have been no different without him other than the Catholic Church stating that they had not sanctioned the exorcisms. Admittedly this is less of a plot hole and more of a random filler with no explanation.

Let's not talk about how one demon has possessed two girls without an explanation as to why but move on to the fact that this movie had some really bad editing. The scene with the fortune-telling 'chatterbox' snapping in and out and then was all of sudden just not used as a symbol in the movie made for some really bad storytelling and splicing for the sake of splicing. The editing on this movie seems like it went through so much that the original story got lost over time and stuff we were supposed to learn didn't make it to the cutting floor.

Also, we barely ever get to see the demon in the flesh, it's just appearing in places and flicking the lights on and off which shows that it probably doesn't want the kind of turmoil that the demon of the original movie brings about when we see his towering statue at the beginning of the movei forshadowing some serious shite going down. Yes, there are moments in this movie where it appears behind people and that sort, but it doesn't feel frightening enough. It feels almost too obvious.

Here's another thing I didn't particularly enjoy about the film: it just didn't feel scary. A horror film is supposed to make you think, make you feel a bit afraid and make you shudder a little. Yes, even if it is me who seriously enjoys this sort of stuff, horror is supposed to be atmospheric. It is supposed to get you lost in the moment of the situation. This film had so much filler of manhunts in the woods and sitting around in a hospital waiting room that I didn't feel like I got lost in the movie. The exorcisms themselves were so quick and what we are left with is lots of conversation and the main character looking generally sick of everyone's shit. It makes for boring viewing after an hour or so, by the time the exorcisms actually happen, the audience is done paying attention.

Finally, I think that this movie had so much scope to be better than it was. Though the acting by the two children was pretty phenomenol for girls of their age, I do believe that the director must hold a lot of the blame for all the other awful things that happened here. This film is advertised as a supernatural horror movie but is probably nothing more than a bit of a psychological thriller. With police hunts through the woods, weird things happening from time to time and a lot of the movie spent discussing possibility rather than showing us the impact of what's going on, all the good stuff was used up by the trailer. An ending which is mediocre at best tops off this thriller with something that was seen as rather predictable from the beginning.

When I say that all the scary stuff was put into the trailer, I mean it. The rest of the movie lies kind of low and doesn't make you fear anything because you're too busy trying to work out what the actual story is. William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty are both turning in their graves. David Gordon Green should probably stick to ruining the Halloween franchise instead.