For a franchise fraught with flawed yet fascinating prequels/sequels (The Exorcist III; Dominion), wonky weirdness, mishandled madness (Exorcist II: The Heretic), mind-numbing mediocrity (Exorcist: The Beginning) and multiple versions, it has all been often, oddly interesting. Now, producer Jason Blum and writer/director David Gordon Green’s attempt to do justice to William Peter Blatty’s novel and William Friedkin’s original film with side-step sequel/franchise reboot, The Exorcist: Believer, but tragically flub it right up.
Peter Satler and Gordon Green’s script starts strong in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where a holidaying couple, pregnant with their first child, are injured in an earthquake. The story picks up thirteen years later in Percy, Georgia with single father Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.) and his daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett). When Angela and her friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill) are found in a farmhouse, after missing for three days, the girls start showing signs suggesting they might be possessed. Victor and Katherine’s parents seek help outside the medical profession when doctors are confounded, so contact exorcism expert Chris MacNeill (Ellen Burstyn) for advice.
An intriguing first half boasts nifty plot turns, unique locales, and subtle hat-tips to the original, but The Exorcist: Believer deteriorates into bunkum when genre chestnuts, drudge dialogue, and marred drama/horror resound like ill-conceived DTV trite, doing away with what came before it. Some jump-scares strike and the cast do their best, but The Exorcist: Believer feels too by-the-numbers, and does a major disservice to the original by coddling a key plot point. While this may not be the most irrefutably turgid Exorcist film, it all too often feels like it, and is certainly the most squandered and monotonous.
THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER opens in cinemas on October 6th
