The Exorcist: Believer Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: David Gordon Green
Stars: Leslie Odom jr, Ellen Burstyn, Jennifer Nettles, Ann Dowd, Raphael Sbarge, Lydia Jewett, Olivia O’Neill, Tracey Graves, E J Bonilla.
Even fifty years after its release, 1973’s The Exorcist remains one of the best, most influential and scariest films from the popular 70s cycle of horror films. Fittingly enough along comes this new horror film that revisits some of the themes and characters from William Friedkin’s groundbreaking horror thriller and gives audiences a fresh angle on the whole demonic possession subgenre.
The film opens in Haiti where photographer Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom jr, from the Tony award winning musical Hamilton, etc) and his heavily pregnant wife Sorenne (Tracey Graves) are enjoying their honeymoon. But then an earthquake strikes, severely damaging the hotel in which they are staying. Tracey is seriously injured and Victor is forced to make a terrible life altering choice.
Thirteen years later Victor is a single parent juggling the demands of raising his teenage daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett, from The Darkest Minds, etc) with his work as a commercial photographer. One day after school Angela says that she is going to be studying with her best friend Katherine (newcomer Olivia O’Neill), and the two girls wander off into the nearby woods. Then they go missing for three days, despite the frantic efforts of both Victor and Katherine’s deeply religious parents Miranda and Troy to try and find them.
When eventually discovered hiding in a barn on a farm thirty miles away from town, the two girls seem to be deeply troubled and have no memory of what transpired. They are soon given over to disturbing, abnormal behaviour. It soon becomes clear, after a series of medical tests and therapy sessions, that they have been possessed by an evil spirit. Victor is helpless to deal with the issue, while Katherine’s parents are more than ready to accept the reality of demonic possession. They approach their local church for help in understanding the situation.
Victor, who has lost his trust in religion, is still struggling to cope when he is approached by Ann (Ann Dowd, from Hereditary, etc) a nurse who works at the hospital and who also happens to be his next-door neighbour. Ann is concerned by what is happening. She gives Victor a copy of the book written by Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn, reprising her role from the original) in which she details her experiences. Since that time Chris has become a world-renowned expert on the subject. In desperation, Victor approaches Chris and asks her for help in understanding what he faces.
Events quickly spiral further out of control, and the worried families hastily organise a non-church ordained do-it-yourself exorcism with the reluctant assistance of renegade local Catholic priest Father Maddox (E J Bonilla, from Gemini Man, etc). Cue the projectile vomiting, rotating heads, vile curses and some gross out moments.
Director David Gordon Green is a journeyman filmmaker who specialises in reboots of popular horror franchises, especially with his recent gory takes on a rebooted Halloween trilogy, etc, and here he envelops the narrative with a suitably dark edge. Green cowrote the script with Peter Sattler (Broken Diamonds, etc), and it suits his pulp sensibilities. Green incorporates a number of well-timed jump scares into the material, but the climactic exorcism sequence runs a little too long and loses much of its power to shock. As Freidkin did with the original, here Green employs practical in-camera effects and some clever gruesome makeup and prosthetics where possible. Cinematographer Michael Simmonds imbues the material with a dark colour palette that creates an ominous mood.
This is the sixth film in The Exorcist franchise, but it ignores many of those other sequels and ripoffs of the original film, and rather it establishes a strong connection to the 1973 film, operating as a direct sequel. The Exorcist: Believer also makes effective use of Mike Oldfield’s classic Tubular Bells, which was such a haunting and resonant part of the original’s score.
We also get a strong connection to the original through the brief return of the character of Chris MacNeil, who has managed to transform her experiences in wrestling with the demonic forces that possessed her daughter Regan into a deep knowledge and understanding of religion and the various exorcism customs from different cultures. But her appearance here is little more than an extended cameo and is hardly necessary as it seems more like an example of stunt casting. Odom is good in his role and makes the most of his character’s confusion and lack of faith. In her film debut O’Neill is also particularly effective as the possessed Katherine.
The Exorcist: Believer is intended to kickstart a new horror trilogy, but it remains to be seen how enthusiastically audiences embrace the concept.
★★☆
