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).