A Review
If I was required to assemble a list of the 10 best horror films ever, the original "The Exorcist" would stand the best chance at topping said list after "Psycho" and "The Shining." It was unlike anything that been produced before and so different from almost any mainstream horror movie released in the 50 years since. What made and still makes William Friedkin's nightmarish yet philosophical classic so special is that it was less interested in the BOO factor and more into the WHO. It wasn't Regan's possession that was the film's most disturbing aspect, but how it affected all those involved. The Exorcist cut into something deeper, humanist, and more meaningful than just ghostly special effects and grotesque makeup: despair in the face of innocent lives invaded by forces beyond their control or comprehension.
You can figure by my high opinion of the original that I'd be taking a tough grading scale with me into "Believer," which starts out promising, but soon disintegrates into a movie that is everything William Friedkin's masterpiece wasn't: a disposable, garden variety spook-fest that uses its characters' beliefs and regrets as gimmicks rather than subjects for dissection.
Here's who and what I had zero qualms with. Leslie Odom Jr. is the lone standout presence. His role as a devoted single parent nearing the end of his rope is reminiscent of Ellen Burstyn's Chris MacNeil and actually contains a bit more backstory and depth. Also, the two girls playing the possessed teens and everyone who was in charge of recreating the demonic effects deserve little criticism. The unsettling stares, voices, gross facial prosthetics, and twisted mind games they play are as authentic as they were back in 1973. Who failed to impress me was everyone else. The supporting cast is made up of naive and cliche stereotypes. Ann Dowd's character, a nurse with a damning secret, feels underbaked and I couldn't for the life of me take any of the moralizing or corny dialogue about the importance of faith seriously.
Unlike Jamie Lee Curtis in 2018's "Halloween," Ellen Burstyn's return in this movie feels unnecessary. She isn't central to the plot so her inclusion is little more than a glorified cameo. What's worse, like he did to Laurie Strode in "Halloween Kills," director David Gordon Green reduces this legacy character to nothing but a grouchy old lady stranded in a hospital bed before closing on a penultimate shot that is nothing but pure fan service.
The sense of dread felt during the exorcism itself is manufactured, and by the time the movie reaches its confusing and lame CGI-filled anticlimax, it feels so far off from "The Exorcist" and closer related to something in the "Insidious" or "Conjuring" universes. It isn't a slap in the face to the original the way Green's last two "Halloween" movies were. I just don't think it enhances the legacy of "The Exorcist," mostly because it never grasps what gave it that legacy in the first place.