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).

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005)

Director: Paul Schrader

Cast: Stellan Skarsgård, Gabriel Mann, Clara Bellar, Billy Crawford

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: Here’s a confession: For my money, Lankester Merrin (Skarsgård) is one of the least interesting characters in the original The Exorcist (1973), and for that matter, William Peter Blatty’s novel, as well. He wanders throughout the film’s opening scenes encountering vague portents of what is to come (or to the reading of a post-Spielbergian moving going public, accidentally unleashed Pazuzu). He then disappears for the nearly the entirety of the film, only to show up to be just about the only thing that the demon is apparently afraid of.

Hence, hinging a whole movie on the idea thrown around in the film that Merrin once engaged in a protracted exorcism, apparently of Pazuzu, is a bit of strain. Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) tried—seems like the wrong word, let’s go with “flailed”—to truck in the same area.

The history of this version is notably fraught. Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) resulted after this version was deemed as too dull and unexciting by the studio, which in turn was too stupid,  needlessly bloody, and fundamentally unwatchable, necessitating the release of this film which by all rights would have been otherwise lost…

And he’s another confession (priests will have that effect on people): I’m not sure I disagree with Warner Bros.’s assessment* that this version is a little turgid. It reckons with some serious themes like morality and faith, but it’s not reaching for anything that the original film didn’t very nearly perfect. Letting Renny Harlin have at the film likely wasn’t the right answer to remedy the film’s problems**.

*For me to ever even dream of admitting that Warner Bros. made the correct decision where a controversial sequel is truly a strange turn of events.

**I took a quick look at the plot summary for The Beginning and determined that it did sound pretty dumb. Just not The Heretic level of dumb.

The Exorcist III (1990)

Director: William Peter Blatty

Cast: George C. Scott, Ed Flanders, Jason Miller, Brad Dourif

Have I Seen it Before: Never. But I was oddly excited to get to this one, based on its reputation as fundamentally better than Exorcist II: The Heretic (1990) but, as it turned out, I’ve had recent dental work I’ve enjoyed more than that film, so that’s hardly conclusion. It also deals with the fate (for lack of a better term) of my favorite character from both the original film and novel, Damien Karras (Miller).

Did I Like It: I certainly wished I liked it more, with everything mentioned above. The problems pile up pretty quickly beyond the pitch, though. Scott lurches through the film alternately whispering and shouting at people with no apparent sense to which mode he is in at any given time, nearly to the point that I became concerned he did that for his entire career. There are a number of editing choices that feel like they may have been made with the editor under the impression that there was a bomb attached to the moviola. Also, for a film marginally about Damien Karras, I feel like the character as depicted here is somewhat divorced from the one we know from the film, and far more egregiously, depressingly underused.

But the real problem is that the film always reeks of studio interference. While “The Exorcist III” looks better on a poster, this movie isn’t about an Exorcist of any kind. The studio saw that and knew they could fix a problem they themselves created. John Carpenter was circling the director’s chair at one point, but realized his own ideas of interjecting an exorcism into this story was against the whole point, and certainly not what William Peter Blatty wanted. Cut to Blatty himself directing, and Warner Bros. becomes hell-bent on interjecting Nicol Williamson into the film. It deflates the whole third act, and leaves the entire film feeling inert at best.

And yet, I still want to read Legion… So at least there’s that.

*Maybe if that film had come with nitrous…

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

Director: John Boorman

Cast: Linda Blair, Richard Burton, Louise Fletcher, Max von Sydow

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: And why did I see it now? This is the truly unfortunate reality of the current streaming age. I watched the theatrical cut of The Exorcist (1973) on Max, and then saw that the sequel was right there waiting for me. I had never seen it, already paid for it, and wanted to keep the good feelings going. I was somewhat aware of the film’s reputation, but it couldn’t have been that bad. Right?

Right?!

Well, let me tell you.

Far be it for me to overly rely on comparisons to Star Trek films, but the comparison just bowls me over here. Sometimes, you bring in a director for a sequel that is detached from what came before who found things he genuinely liked about the series, like Nicholas Meyer in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and things work out great. Sometimes you bring in a similar director who couldn’t be bothered to give one shit about the source material, like Stuart Baird in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002), and things wind up disappointing, at best.

Here, Boorman had gone on record hating the film so much that he even tried to convince Warner Bros. not to make it or release it. The contempt not only plays, but permeates the entire movie. What we’re offered is a hodgepodge of weak characters (including those returning), glacial pacing, terrible special effects*, all head together by the weak glue of new age junk of the worst sort.

Avoid the film at all costs. Also, why the hell is it called The Heretic?

*After this and Jurassic World Dominion (2022), we should really make a rule that the instant movie sequels bring locusts into the proceedings, the whole film ought to be re-considered.

The Exorcist (1973)

Director: William Friedkin

Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Jason Miller, Linda Blair

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. My most memorable screening is when I managed to convince someone who at that time was simultaneously a devout Christian and deathly afraid of demonic possession to watch it with me. Truly, the spirit of Pazusu was working through me.

Did I Like It: As we prepared to remedy a glaring blind spot in the canon of Beyond the Cabin in the Woods, I decided to deep dive into the world of Lankester Merrin (von Sydow, for whom the old age make up may look fake at times but is a pretty decent approximation of the man he would become in his later years) and pals. I really enjoyed William Peter Blatty’s original novel, and especially Damien Karras (Miller) as a character, and unfortunately you might soon be subjected to my thoughts about the various Exorcist sequels (except for Exorcist: The Beginning (2004), because even I have my limits*).

And the act of going through the same story in the movie is fine. It hits all the right beats and manages to shake off some of the fat in the original story, but there is something missing in the translation. Such is life when comparing movies to their source material.

Where the movie succeeds wildly (and specifically either the unwieldly “Version You’ve Never Seen Before” or the Extended Director’s Cut) is in its ability to subtly unnerve. One might be able to find the occasional splicing in of Captain Howdy to be a bit of a parlor trick, but for me it is the best kind of cinematic horror. It’s the kind of thing that Murnau excelled at, around which The Blair Witch Project (1999) built an entire movie, and Muschietti occasionally tripped over in IT - Chapter One (2017), where you’re not entirely sure what you’re looking at sometimes, and it seems to live within the shadows which were the stuff out of which the earliest photography was made. That’s simple enough, but then you find yourself thinking about it that evening, and looking at the darkness in the distance as you’re feeding the cat, and before you know it, the movie has stuck in your mind.

*Although I’m not weirdly fascinated by it now. How do you make an early-oughts horror movie (with all of the requisite Matthew Lillard-ness that might entail) with these characters that a studio would feel comfortable releasing? The mind boggles, but that’s probably a discussion for a whole other review.