The Exorcist: Believer (2023)

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Leslie Odom Jr, Ann Dowd, Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair*

Have I Seen it Before: Well…

Did I Like It: And that’s not even the real problem. Sure, this is—in the broadest possible strokes—a rehash of the superlative The Exorcist (1973)—but there’s so much more here to annoy me.

Let’s say first that I had more than a little bit of anticipation for this film. I am one of those few people that have genuinely really liked all of Green’s Halloween trilogy (although I loved the first, and like the third better than the second), so I was probably one of the few remaining audience members that Green has yet to alienate.

Well, we’re here now. Is it all as bad as the series can get? No, it doesn’t have the almost willfully silly newage qualities of Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), but it does get real close. Your reviewer nearly once attended seminary to become a Unitarian Minister, and even I got to a point with this film’s groaning attempts at to make an ecumenical team of exorcists really doesn’t hold a lot of water. The Catholics in the film are rendered as either hapless, meddlesome, or both. I’m not sure why that bothers me—indeed, that depiction of the modern Catholic church seems pretty apt, if a little cliché. It ultimately leaves the film so willfully antithetical to the spirit of the original story and leaves it just like every other pale exorcism-themed immitator of the last fifty years..

It also doesn’t help that the film can’t quite decide whether or not it wants to embrace its legacy or not piss anybody off.

I can’t help but wonder if this is Green attempting what Sam Raimi did with Spider-Man 3 (2007). He can’t want to keep making the same horror legacy sequel over and over again until the end of time, but they keep being reasonably profitable. He’s going to have to work hard—and possibly continue to work even harder still—to eithe get fired or not asked back for the continuation of this process.

*Spoiler, as she apparently got the same deal Mark Hamill got in Star Wars - Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015).

Halloween Ends (2022)

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matchiak, James Jude Courtney, Rohan Campbell

Have I Seen it Before: Well, that’s really the whole point, isn’t it?

Did I Like It: There is literally no opinion about this movie that isn’t controversial, so we probably better get this one out of the way right away:

Yes. My name is Mac Boyle, and I enjoyed Halloween Ends. If you’re no longer here when I get to the next paragraph, I’ll understand. We’ll always have that romantic motorcycle ride we took between murders.

Still here?

Okay.

Ends is a meditation on the effect of violence on people. Some of them try to force the idea of moving on. Some collapse in on themselves. Still more try to wield that evil for their own in a vain, flailing attempt to exert dominion over their lives. It also has a little, itty bitty flirtation with a golden-year romance between two characters I have spent a lot of time liking over the past several years. I’ll admit that if your relationship to the Halloween series is entirely dependent on the series adhering to its tried-and-true formula, this film isn’t going to work for you. But I am forever a sucker—like Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)—for a sequel that Trojan-horses an entirely different genre into their series. Green’s movies have been unique echoes of what Carpenter might have done with the series had he not given up on the whole affair back in the 80s.

Now, given the amount of breath I’ve wasted over the last fifteen years complaining about Rob Zombie’s two films in the series, you would might be totally justified in thinking me something of a hippocrite. But consider this; for all of the weird new territory that this film attempts (I will admit, not everything about the film works 100%; I’m looking in your direction, band kids), Michael and The Shape (Courtney) is still that strange kid who woke up one day and decided to start and never stop stabbing people. No siblings. No Thorn. No “Love Hurts” and disappointing stripper moms. If the core of what made something work in the first place stays in tact, then I’m ready to go in a lot of weird directions

Halloween Kills (2021)

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Two new movies in such a short amount of time. What an embarrassment of riches. I caught the movie on Peacock because a) Still not entirely sure who would be breathing on me in a movie theater, so if there’s another option, why not go for it and b) I can take a watch through the shockingly good Saved by the Bell relaunch.

Wasn’t thinking one of my reviews of the Halloween movies would include a reference to Saved by the Bell, but here we are…

Did I Like It: Hawkins (Patton) lives! Is that enough for a review? Probably not. I so enjoyed that character, and was injured by his apparent death in the last film, I’m willing to give the whole affair a pass.

As a sequel to Green’s Halloween (2018), it is probably safe to say that this film isn’t the same uniformly satisfying experience. I think that, largely, is fueling some of the negative reaction* to the film. Characters are introduced (in many cases, reintroduced) at a lightning pace, and disposed of nearly as quickly. Jamie Lee Curtis—such a vital, essential presence in the last film—is relegated to a hospital bed for the runtime, echoing some of the stranger decisions in Halloween II (1981). I don’t buy for a moment that the men who live in the Myers house now are somehow the only people in town who weren’t aware (or suspected, or were ready to form a mob because) Myers was on a rampage again. The film is perhaps a bit too obsessed with the mythology of the character that I can’t help but get the sinking feeling the next film will commit that most odious sin and try to explain Myers.

The shape (if you’ll forgive the expression) of this trilogy is incomplete, and so this film might end up being remembered as something of a fundamental mess, or perhaps just a victim of the middle-trilogy syndrome. I get the sense that Green and Company have some very specific ideas for what the forthcoming Halloween Ends will look like, and this movie is largely a clearing house from the last film, when it isn’t obsessed with setting the table for the next.

But there are plenty of things to like about the film. The flashbacks to 1978 (a sequence which was attempted for the last movie, but cut for budgetary reason) are great fun, and only add to the hero that is Sheriff Hawkins. When the film finally unleashes in its final minutes, it does so in a rather surprising fashion. A Carpenter score is a Carpenter score, and you can never go wrong with it.

Ultimately, any review really must exist in context. Anyone who hates this movie is either so weighed down by unreasonable expectations, determined to react to every movie in bad faith, or has not watched any of the other films recently. I watched all of them in the last week, and it’s clear this is one of the better films to feature Michael Audrey Myers, just not the best.

*Interesting note. Peacock posts the current Rotten Tomatoes score on the HUD when the movie is paused or just starting to play. The film’s score went up a whole percent while we watched the vanity cards. I’ve never seen the consensus change (to very nearly fresh, no less) as I started watching a film.