The Exorcist: Believer (2023)

 SPOILERS

There is a scene in 'The Exorcist Believer', where Leslie Odom Jr's demonically possessd daughter Lydia Jewett, taunts him about a particularly difficult past personal trauma with the phrase "God played a trick on you." Well I feel like the makers of this film played a trick on me.

I went into this movie with low expectations, based both on its 22% Rotten Tomatoes score and the record of past Exorcist sequels. I went to see it because I'm an Exorcist completist, not because I thought it would be any good. To my surprise however, for much of the running time I was impressed by just how decent it seemed. On reflection I believe that I had fallen victim to what I'll call 'The Force Awakens Effect'.

'The Force Awakens Effect' is when a movie does a competent enough job riffing on the general outline of a film your already fond of, that it creates the false impression that the movie is better then it really is. With 1973's The Exorcist doing most of the stories heavy lifting, The Exorcist: Believer is watchable, it even seems to be working, it is when the film goes off that safe script that it really falls apart.

Ellen Burstyn returns to the role of Chris MacNeil, in the half century since the events of the first film she has become a self educated expert on demonic possession, writting a best selling book on her daughters experiences, a book which lead to their estrangement. Odom approaches her for help with the duel possession of his daughter and her friend Olivia O'Neill. While Chris's non academic experience with exorcism was second hand, fifty years ago, and resulted in the deaths of two experienced Catholic priests, the 90 year old woman determins she can probably take a stab at it. It doesn't end well.

Eventually a decision is made to attempt a very eucomenucal exorcism with practitioners of various faiths, this has a very contemporary vibe to it, though it undercuts a big part of what made the original Exorcist so scary, that the only way to fight the demon was through use of  old esoteric practices, that the old esoteric Catholic Church now found too old and esoteric. Now I'm not saying that this 'all religions hold truth' approach to a battle of good and evil couldn't work, something along this line was done and worked in The Devil Rides out movie in 1968 and its decades older source material. However it doesn't work here, it feels silly, self conscious and lame.

Now I didn't hate 'The Exorcist: Believer', it's about 1/3 bad and 2/3rds okay, but it's more like an off brand knocked off then a legitimate heir to the greatest horror movie of all time; though there are certainly worse Exorcist sequels. If you bother to see it make sure you approach it as what it really is, don't let the filmmakers play a trick on you. **