THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER: Floundering Faith in Messy Retread

A crucial element of The Exorcist has changed over time: Kids being possessed by demons is funny. Although the original Exorcist movie was considered the scariest of paranormal horror upon its 1973 release, the premise has only grown more comical over time, where Regan’s cussing, head-contorting, and bodily-fluid-spewing antics have become punchlines. You need only look at this year’s The Pope’s Exorcist to see how absurd the premise can get.

It’s absurd that The Exorcist: Believer is perhaps aware of and trying to downplay, as though it’s trying to be less camp and more earnest in trying to reach that rickety mantle of “elevated horror.” But a film like this could really use more of that dark and maybe even unintentional humor to humanize a picture like this. Instead of the film finding something more like a modern remake of a horror classic, it stumbles around in the dark as it tosses everything at the screen with nothing sticking, swirling into a mess of ideas.

Believer starts strong enough by presenting a unique family situation. Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) is a single dad raising his teenage daughter Angela since birth. It’s been a hard life as he’s had to endure being a dad without his wife, who died during childbirth amid an earthquake while on vacation. Despite such a tragic event, he’s done well enough to raise his daughter with love while his faith in higher powers has diminished. 

Single Dad Issues

A few scenes are spent on this family dynamic, but not enough before the expected demon possession arrives. There’s so little time with the Fielding family that so much of Victor’s complex relationship with family and faith arrives almost inexplicably throughout the narrative. I wanted to care for this conflicted father and former husband to see through his daughter’s rescue from the clutches of otherworldly evil. Yet Victor feels like as much of a passenger on this journey as the rest of the audience.

When looking beyond the expected frights, cameos, and spooky setting, it’s debatable exactly what Believer is trying to say in its story. At first, the film seems to be about Victor finding God, especially with his nosy neighbor (Ann Dowd), an almost-nun who stresses the importance of faith. Then, it feels like a criticism of religion, considering that Angela gets another girl possessed by a demon and is from a much more religious family.

Searching For Themes in the Dark

Then there’s the aspect of coming to terms with grief, as Angela longs to learn about her mother, and Victor wants to keep that at bay as much as possible. Yet Victor’s grief only seems to linger when facing the fear of losing his daughter. This leads to a twist that could be viewed as an allegory for abortion. I write “could be” since the film never develops this aspect further, only highlighting it with a mild “Doesn’t the sound familiar?”

As if it weren’t bad enough that the film feels like a sloppy stew of paranormal horror with rarely mixed ingredients, the abundance of characters crowd the screen by the third act. Do you know how there are two possessed girls instead of one? Well, now multiple religious figures are trying to exorcise demons from children. Too many people are invited to this party as a rootwork healer, Baptist pastor, Pentecostal preacher, and Catholic priest all combine their forces as though they’re Captain Planet’s Planeteers. Instead of summoning a hero, they remove a demon from little girls. Sometimes. If they’re lucky.

Too Many Cooks, Not That Scary

Having all these characters cavorting about the screen gives little time for the returning character, Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), to offer any insight. She enters this picture to deliver fairly passive commentary on the familiar Exorcist events, offering up little more than obligatory monologues on understanding evil and demons. She at least plays a slightly bigger role in getting involved with the violence, but her inclusion still wreaks of an obligatory nostalgic tug rather than an essential component of this story. This is especially true for the final scene, which shoves in a last-minute cameo that arrives far too little and too late.

As the film bats around so many ideas, the real terror never feels as present. The demon possession happens off-screen, and the mystery behind the two missing girls doesn’t have enough time to present a sense of dread. There are so many “wait, when did this happen” moments throughout the story that it becomes a challenge to feel everything the characters are going through when we’re kept in the dark about so much.

As stated, demon-possessed girls are funny but heavily restrained in this picture. Consider the scene where Angela’s possessed friend walks through church service in a messy dress and evil in her eyes. This would be an opportune moment for her to really showcase the terror. All she can muster is repeating the words “the body and the blood” louder and louder. Come on, girl; you can whip up more sacrilege than that.

Conclusion: The Exorcist: Believer

Believer wields the Exorcist saga poorly by vomiting so much at the screen and leaving little more than a mess of themes and characters. Universal was most likely hoping that David Gordon Green could steer this franchise to success as he did with his Halloween trilogy. Instead of picking a lane, Green’s film veers all over the place, trying to find something that works. The final result is a collection of half-thought ideas for good Exorcist movies that don’t mix into a good film. You need more than head-twisting, jumpcuts, and platitudes about faith to make for a compelling paranormal horror in the same vein as The Exorcist; Believer isn’t even in the same country.

The Exorcist: Believer is currently playing in theaters.