The Exorcist Believer: another rubbish requel
Mark Kermode’s all-time favourite film is 1973’s The Exorcist. He gave himself eight minutes to verbally bludgeon 2023’s The Exorcist Believer in his review on the Kermode and Mayo’s Take podcast. I’ll take his lead and allow myself only eight minutes to say what I have to say here, for it deserves not a moment longer.
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The Exorcist Believer is brought to us by Blumhouse Productions, Jason Blum’s production company that in 2018 got the first instalment in their Halloween requel trilogy so, so objectively right, and proceeded to get the two follow-ups so, so objectively wrong. I was curious to see what they’d do with an Exorcist movie; will they exercise (exorcise?) the good-movie part of their collective brain, or the bad-movie part?
Bad-movie part. In a big, big way.
Okay, so what to say?
Blumhouse paid almost half a billion dollars for the rights to this franchise, and yeah, I’m afraid this is the first in a planned trilogy. Because of course it is.
Listen, it’s The Exorcist. The Exorcist. What you’re playing with is horror’s equivalent to The Godfather. In fact, scrap the horror part. This ain’t genre specific. The Exorcist is simply one of the all-time seminal pieces of cinema, and is loved by horror and cinema aficionados more than maybe any other horror flick.
So what were they going to do with it?! That was the question going around my head when the requel was announced. ‘Requel’ is the keyword here, since most requels are trash. Yet, as stated above, 2018’s Halloween was a genuinely thrilling work fully deserving of the Halloween mantel. Above all else, they GOT the film. They UNDERSTOOD what Halloween was about. Would they get this property the way they got that one?
In my pondering as to what a major studio (who must surely comprehend the significance of producing a new Exorcist film) would do with this opportunity – how they would creatively and artistically bring something special to this rare event – my imagination went into overdrive:
💭Will they attempt something unique with the aesthetic? What if they revert from digital to film, but, like, an aged film to give it the look of the 1973 movie? Or something.
💭Will they play with the timeline, telling a grand, overarching story at the centre of which lies the original movie, while this new narrative sprawls from decades before The Exorcist straight into the decades that follow it? Or something.
💭In what way will they honour this cherished property that may subvert all our expectations and predictions so astoundingly that we’re left simply stunned at the masterwork they produce? OR – what if – they honour it by remaining faithful to the original, somehow telling a story that’s new but which still respects The Exorcist?
Or…something.
Blumhouse Productions/Morgan Creek Entertainment/Rough House Pictures. Blame them.
I should be jaded now given the state of modern Hollywood – truly, I am jaded – but there’s still always the little hyped up kid inside me trembling with anticipation at the thought of a new release that might just KICK ASS.
In case you hadn’t already gotten the gist of this piece, The Exorcist Believer kicks no such ass.
My eight minutes is slipping away, but it’s my hope that I’ve already at least somewhat torn this abomination a new one. Kermode’s review (he tears it about twelve new ones) makes the repeated point as to how little the filmmakers here understood the original. No, not every sequel/prequel/requel/squeakuel must emulate the intention of their predecessor, but if it doesn’t attempt at least some kind of thematic cohesion with the original, then what’s the point? Why not just come up with an entirely new idea? Simply bringing back beloved characters for a rehashed caper is a money-grab, plain and simple. Slapping the Exorcist name on your film IS going to bring in the big bucks, but with that privilege you wield a weighty responsibility. The makers of The Exorcist Believer were either (SOMEHOW) entirely oblivious to said responsibility, just didn’t give a crap, or were deluding themselves into thinking they actually did pay mind to this responsibility.
All are equally worrying possibilities.
But where do this film’s crimes actually lie?
There’s the oh-so-utterly generic look to the thing. There’s the cripplingly dull characters. There’s the cheap, CHEAP scares that are barely befitting the crappiest horror film. Above all else, it’s boring, then it’s tedious, then it’s infuriating, then it’s nonsensical.
As with the Scream requels, they brought back the original characters for one purpose and one purpose alone: to sell tickets. They serve no function. Sure, they say some stuff. They do some stuff. But character goes deeper than that. Moreover, the interplay between character and plot goes deeper, each driving the other in a beautiful spiralling dance. Character should inform the plot, and plot inform the character, and if your use of beloved legacy characters goes no further than wheeling them out for some cheap fan service (and to deliver criminally cringy and disingenuous lines about tHe pAtRiArChY, which rival Zoë Kravitz’s moronic musings on “white privileged assholes” in 2022’s The Batman) then you absolutely don’t deserve those legacy characters.
I’m not even religious, but I bought into the world of the original. God and the Devil: there could be no better representations of good and evil. Religiosity has been baked into our collective psyches over tens of thousands of years. It predates Abrahamic scripture by many-a-millennium, but Catholic religious imagery rings true in a uniquely familiar, vivid way. The Exorcist understood this. I have no particular affinity with priests or holy imagery, but the priests vs demons of the original film function in an elementally understandable way.
They served as the perfect vehicle for the struggle of real-world morality and the overcoming of despair. The world of The Exorcist – and all subsequent iterations, both good and bad – was built in a way that requires these specific forces of good and evil to exist, but Believer tears that world down, casting the Catholic Church in a cowardly, ineffective light. Did this new Exorcist film need to go as heavy with the Catholic stuff as the original did? Frankly, yes – that’s what makes it The Exorcist – but even if they’d felt compelled to take a different angle, they could have found some other way to accomplish this other than painting the primary protagonistic force in such a lame light. Interviews with the production and writing teams for Believer show that they cared more about social politics than crafting a film that makes any coherent sense or respects the original. Virtue signalling is not their job. When oh when will Hollywood executives and filmmakers realise this?!
How it's meant to be done. (Hoya Productions)
Representation/diversity has its place, purpose, and value, but – as is the recurring theme in our deranged modernity – here it comes at the expense of all sense and reason in this fictional world that means so much to so many people.
Tying in every religion as one big protagonistic entity instead of the single, cohesive force of the original was detrimental to the plot, and existed only to fit specific sociopolitical angles now expected of Hollywood films. As one reviewer put it, “Either Christianity is true and all the other religions are false, or Christianity is false and the entire world in which The Exorcist takes place doesn’t make any sense.”
The church in the original serves as a mechanism for A) Father Damien Karras overcoming his own personal demons, and B) a placeholder for the forces of good in the world that strive to overcome the forces of bad. Simple. William Peter Blatty, author of the novel, was a devout Catholic, but The Exorcist didn’t come across as preachy or propagandist. No, he used something he felt passionate about to write about human struggles, human trials – eternal messages of grief, redemption, and purpose. The writers of Believer used their film to propagate what they feel passionate about – modern social politics – instead of those timeless struggles that made the original such an effective, emotional film. They used the Exorcist name as a Trojan horse for what at times feels like a party political broadcast, all under the guise of ‘love = good!’ But there were insidious messages woven into the ostensibly benevolent narrative of Believer. Some of us see through your manoeuvres, foul deceivers, and we don’t appreciate it.
Besides the social politics shoehorned into the film, as a writer I feel the greatest sin this film commits is the spoon feeding. In the extended director’s cut version of The Exorcist (subtitled The Version You’ve Never Seen) there’s a scene William Friedkin cut in which, during the climactic exorcism, the two priests essentially sit and discuss what’s going on, adding explanations where none are needed. In an interview, Friedkin spoke about how the details given in this scene were already inherent in the film, threaded carefully through every scene to have come before. It was redundant, so he cut it.
This is, above all else, what Believer didn’t understand.
Audience’s want to discover the truth of a film for themselves, not be told. Maybe some of the jump scares, fake frights, and moments of obnoxiously loud audio just for cheap jolts could have been forgiven had Believer understood the value of luring a viewer into a world in which the answer won’t so much be written on a placard for them, but rather allowed to present itself naturally to the engaged viewer. Maybe some of the amateurish, sloppy editing could have been let go had the filmmakers not regarded their audience’s intellect with such disdain. Maybe the horrible dubbing, the political use of legacy characters, utter lack of nuance and subtlety, and idiotic visual throwbacks could have been swept under the rug had they respected the original, their audience, and the craft of filmmaking.
Doesn’t sound so hard, does it?
A month prior to enduring The Exorcist Believer, I fulfilled a lifelong dream of seeing the original on the big screen. It was a joy, except for the imbecile a few rows in front of us giggling and guffawing throughout. This latest Blumhouse requel is made for morons like her, and I do hope she enjoyed it.
As Kermode said in his scathing review (I hope I did you proud, Mark) the best part of the film was the fact that it ended. Do yourself a favour and don’t even let it start.
It’s safe to say I’ve gone way over my eight minutes, but this had to be done. I’ll wrap up by quoting film critic Ed Whitfield, who tweeted this amusing anecdote about a conversation he had with Friedkin before the director’s passing:
“William Friedkin once said to me, ‘Ed, the guy who made these new Halloween [films] is about to make one to my movie, The Exorcist. That’s right, my signature film is about to be extended by the man who made Pineapple Express. I don’t want to be around when that happens. But if there’s a spirit world, and I come back, I plan to possess David Gordon Green and make his life a living hell.’”
Let’s be honest, for this travesty the dude would deserve it.
Since writing this review, news has broken of director David Gordon Green’s exit from The Exorcist Deceiver, the second part in this planned shit-show of a trilogy. It’s also been removed from Blumhouse’s release schedule and is reportedly on indefinite hold. Let us pray to almighty Pazuzu that this remains the case.
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