Watched in: Theaters
What’s it about? Taking place 13 years after a tragic incident, the story follows a father trying to save his daughter and her best friend following a demonic possession. Considering how excellent the first film is and that this ignores the previous sequel it had, there was potential to make this reboot-sequel work. The best part of it is the beginning Haiti sequence considering the production value of how an event unfolds and presents a dilemma that could’ve led to something scary.
However, after that intro, everything else about the narrative falls apart badly on a story and character based level. The numerous characters don’t feel like an audience can connect with but just their stock archetypes that are burdened with bad dialogue. The plot is busy rushing to get from point exposition to “big exorcism” at the end to the point where it forgets to create a memorable experience. In addition to how dumb the writing slowly gets, this goes for a modern move of “bringing back a character from first movie for brownie points” that makes it even worse based on execution. As a result, we don’t get enough investment in the stakes, the victims of this possession, and the attempts at being scary are predictably laughable with annoying jump scares (which I laughed at). Even the pacing of things hurts the experience and at the end any character proclamations about hopefulness exposes how this director/writer doesn’t understand why the predecessor is a masterpiece.
How are the actors? The actors to focus on are Leslie Odom Jr and Ann Dowd. Leslie gives one of the better performances in this as he portrays devotion that’s easy empathize with. Ann is directed into being fairly flat in her delivery, despite a few momentums of decent acting, which is hard to ignore considering how she’s needed for exposition. Honorable Mentions Lidya Jewett and Olivia Marcum for being competent enough for their victim roles as well as going along with unintentionally funny demonic shenanigans. Dishonorable Mentions Norbert Leo Butz and Ellen Burstyn for fairing the worst out of the supporting cast for some of the dumbest writing choices in this.
Overall Consensus: The Exorcist: Believer is a terrible legacy horror sequel that’s hindered by terrible writing, lackluster directing/editing, mixed acting, weak scare factor, and lack of story depth. Runtime: 1 hour 51 minutes R
Reasons to watch it: You like any of the aforementioned actors and/or filmmaker David Gordon Green. You are curious to see how this compares to other modern legacy horror sequels. You like seeing hilariously bad scares. You have seen the 1973 predecessor and want to see how this compares.
Reasons to avoid it: You dislike any of the aforementioned actors and/or filmmaker David Gordon Green. You are bored with modern legacy horror sequels. You are annoyed with boring predictable jump scares. You have seen the 1973 predecessor and don’t want to see how this compares. You hate seeing scary flicks that get more stupid as the story keeps moving.
Screening Spectacles 