I am not one to say The Exorcist (1973) is one of the scariest movies ever made, but I do recognize the impact it has had not only on film, but on worldwide culture. So when a continuation of the story came out, I had to see it and compare. Beware — spoilers ahead!
A photographer and his pregnant wife are vacationing in Haiti when an earthquake hits. The wife, newly blessed at a Haitian Voodoo house, dies, leaving the photographer to raise his daughter alone. Thirteen years later, the now-teen daughter and her friend try to contact the spirit of her dead mother, only to end up possessed by an evil entity. It is up to the dad, other friends and family members, and a not-so-surprising guest to rid the girls of this powerful, satanic force.
To get it out of the way, I am an athiest, so already any kind of exorcism movie will not be scary to me at all. Like I said at the top of the review, I understand the impact the original Exorcist had on society. It may be unbelievable to me, but its story, character development, and special effects are top shelf. To this day, my dad still talks about Regan’s head spinning around, the spider walk, and the pea soup. I expected nothing less from The Exorcist: Believer.
Unfortunately, I should have known better. The dad is kind of an asshole the whole time. He understandably is a helicopter parent, but this leads his daughter to lie, sneak out, and get possessed. He accuses other parents of not being close to their kids. He dismisses help or kind words from neighbors, and even in the end is still kind of iffy on this whole “religion” thing. He is generally unlikeable. While other characters were better, I just didn’t care about any of them — except the friend’s mom (and we’ll get to that later). I don’t know if it was the chemistry between everyone or the writing or dialog, but something was lacking.
Believer tried to be different, which I applaud. From the beginning, they bring in all sorts of other non-Catholic religions to defeat the evil inside of the girls. I liked how they did the bait-and-switch with the Haitian Voodoo at the beginning; I was convinced this would be the inciting incident, not a pendulum game. My problem though, is that when all of these religions come together to perform the exorcism, I’m pretty damn sure most of those Christianity-based healers would have poo-pawed the rootwork woman. Unrealistic, and crazy because her skills seemed to be the only really useful ones there. Even the Catholic ex-nun couldn’t hold her shit together long enough to read a paragraph in the book!
If you were looking for more head spinning and obscene acts with a crucifix, just go back and watch the original. Believer was pretty tame, heavily relying on meh face makeup, yawn-inducing jumpscares, and supernatural powers put to shame by other movies like The Conjuring. It’s a bit pathetic what they did with that amount of money, honestly.
What I go back and forth on the most is the ending. The photographer’s daughter lives, and her friend ends up being dragged down to Hell (she dies). I am conflicted because I appreciate the unexpected outcome — killing a child — but I felt it was mean-spirited and undeserved. I feel most for that mom because she did everything right and still lost her daughter because she wasn’t going to be baptized for another week. Are you telling me that because homegirl got blessed before she was even born by some shady rando in Haiti, that the girl who was helping her friend contact her dead mom while going to church every Sunday for presumably her whole life had to die because her parents loved her too much? Trash ending.
And then what happens after? A house full of people performing an exorcism and two dead bodies, one injured in the hospital? I would kill to see that police report and be a fly on the wall in that courthouse.
The Exorcist: Believer tried to gain some clout by casting Chris and Regan MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair) from the original Exorcist, but really they made little to no difference. A simple name-drop would have sufficed. Or better yet, just not even making this movie at all. If you like exorcisms, sure, add it to your list. But I find no reason to watch otherwise.
What did you think of The Exorcist: Believer? Let us know in the comments!
