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The Exorcist: Believer

“The Exorcist: Believer” is a pretty good movie that’s so stuffed with characters and not-quite-developed ideas that you may come away from it thinking about what it could have been instead. 

Directed and co-written by David Gordon Green , who recently oversaw a trilogy of “Halloween” sequels, it focuses on the simultaneous possession of two young girls (apparently by the same demon that haunted the first movie) and the harmonic convergence of parents and clerics trying to liberate them from evil. It’s probably the first “Exorcist” sequel since 1977’s fitfully brilliant “Exorcist II: The Heretic” to capture the persistent sense of the uncanny that made William Friedkin’s first entry in the series a smash hit. 

The opening third, which sets all of the narrative pieces in place, is the slowest and subtlest part of the movie. But it’s also the most satisfying because of the confident way it uses silence, misdirection, and negative space to make the audience wonder if evil is already present in the story or if we’re just being paranoid. Green has clearly studied William Friedkin’s original as if it were a holy (or unholy?) text and reproduces some of the master’s techniques for setting viewers on edge: for instance, adding a disruptive sound (such as a car horn) when the movie cuts from one scene to another, or cutting away to unnerving, oddly framed closeups (flashes of demonic faces and bloody wounds, shots of jackhammers, and so on) when characters are having important conversations. The film becomes less compelling as it goes along, however, ultimately succumbing to the horror movie equivalent of the problem that often afflicts superhero movies packed with lots of heroes and villains. The story’s energy gets dispersed, and the movie gradually loses touch with the source of its initial power, the privilege of focusing on the main characters: a widowed father named Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) and his daughter Angela ( Lidya Jewett ). 

We meet Victor in the film’s prologue, set in Haiti, where Victor and his very pregnant wife, both photographers, are vacationing. An earthquake collapses the building they’re staying in and crushes her, though not before she accepts the locals’ blessing to protect the baby. Doctors tell Victor they can save his wife or unborn daughter, but not both. We know how that turned out. The script elides exactly how the decision came about and how it affected Victor, saving it all for future revelations and gradually expanding flashbacks. 

Thirteen years later, father and daughter live in Atlanta, Georgia, where Victor has a thriving photographic portrait studio. The now-13-year-old Angela asks permission from her understandably super-protective father to have her first-ever after-school studying visit with a classmate: her best friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill), whose parents ( Jennifer Nettles and Norbert Leo Butz ) are Catholic. Unfortunately, this is no ordinary study break: the girls spent a couple of furtive hours in the woods near the school, communicating with a spirit at the bottom of some kind of abandoned shaft, and emerged, um, different.  

The movie initially seems as if it’s going to be another Catholicism-centered exorcism flick, but this is a misdirection that sets up some good jokes (not on Catholicism itself, but the way so many exorcism movies treat the Vatican as the spiritual equivalent of The Avengers). The film ultimately opts for more of a United Nations-of-spirituality approach, noting that most cultures throughout history have had equivalents for possession and exorcism, then assembling experts to attack the demon from multiple theological angles. 

Raphael Sbarge plays the priest at Katherine’s family’s church who bears witness to a disturbing outburst by the demon-possessed girl, who grows increasingly impatient and irritable as a Sunday service unfolds. Ann Dowd has a supporting role as Paula, a next-door neighbor who realizes while caring for Angela at the hospital that the kid isn’t acting that way because she’s got the flu. Though not an ordained holy person, Paula has connections to the Catholic faith and rallies to the cause. She’s joined by Father Maddox (E.J. Bonilla), a goodhearted but fainthearted young padre who goes to the Church seeking permission for an official, sanctioned exorcism and ends up becoming a bit like the skittish young priest that Richard Pryor played in the old “Saturday Night Live” parody of “ The Exorcist ” (“Father, where is your faith?” “It’s in the car … I’ll go get it!”) There’s even a demon-battler imported from Haiti ( Okwui Okpokwasili ) who pushes Victor to reconnect with beliefs he rejected after his wife’s death.

Then, of course, there’s Chris McNeil (Ellen Burstyn), the mother from the original “The Exorcist,” making a “legacy sequel” appearance that connects this entry to the series’ origin point. The handling of Burstyn’s character is, unfortunately, the weakest part of the film’s midsection—a study in misdirection that disappoints rather than surprises or delights. The movie sets up conditions wherein Chris seems poised to become this sequel’s version of Max von Sydow’s battle-hardened old priest in the first movie, and channels Burstyn’s offscreen involvement with spiritually-oriented subjects and causes , then builds and builds and builds to the sequence where Paula gives Victor the memoir Chris wrote about her daughter’s possession and recovery and then …  pffft . Nothing. After one big scene, “The Exorcist: Believer” seems to have to remind itself that she’s part of the story and find ways to connect her to the other characters through editing.

Green keeps all the different elements in play and tries not to short-shrift any particular character. It’s not easy, apparently. But the movie has personality, at least. Green has had one of the oddest careers in Hollywood, starting out with achingly sincere independent dramas (“ George Washington ,” “ All the Real Girls “), pivoting to stoner comedies (“ Pineapple Express ,” “ Your Highness “), and somehow ending up in major-label franchise horror. He knows his way around this genre, and he doesn’t just apply the “Halloween” template again; he knows it’s a different kind of story that requires a more patient and earthy approach. The movie’s quasi-documentary impulse (complete with handheld camerawork and French New Wave-style editing in montage scenes) goes a long way toward making you believe that you’re seeing plausible individuals confronting the unspeakable and unmeasurable. 

But in the end, the movie still becomes more of an exercise in logistics than the kind of work that’ll keep you up till dawn wondering if you made sure to close every window to prevent the dreaded demon Pazuzu from sneaking in and possessing you (which is how the writer of this piece spent several insomniac months after seeing the original “Exorcist” on TV as a child). The performances are all beyond reproach, even in relatively small roles like that of Sbarge’s priest, a showboater shocked and humbled by what he’s gotten himself into. Odom is especially impressive because his character is so internalized and uncommunicative, but he still manages to get across the father’s distress and complex and often contradictory emotions. The child leads are superb and seem to be having fun saying horrible things to adults. 

If only the exorcism itself had any novelty, much less real dramatic power: between the fact that nearly ever exorcism sequence is basically the same and the glut of “Exorcist”-type projects in recent years (including the original, excellent “ The Conjuring ” and the “Exorcist” TV series), there’s nothing in the final sequence that will shock or even surprise viewers, except for a few character moments that would have landed harder if the large cast of characters were more finely etched. The climax of this one doesn’t hit as hard as it should because we haven’t gotten to know all the people in that evil-infused room (not to mention the details of their faith). The spectacular movie moments that screenwriter William Goldman called “The Whammies” can’t knock the viewer over unless the characters have weight.

Friedkin excelled on both fronts: the drama and the whammies. The original is still effective because it takes its sweet time establishing characters who seem like real people, then puts them and the audience through a prolonged, brutal ordeal together—one that, at the time, no one had ever seen on a screen before. Clocking in at a relatively breezy 121 minutes in length, “The Exorcist: Believer” is a rare case where a long cut would play better than a short one. Given that the hero and his late wife were photographers, you’d expect photography to play into this film the way sound recording did in the first one, but either the script isn’t interested or just part of the movie got cut down to almost nothing. And there are a lot of underdeveloped themes and elements, including the notion that a culturally divided America needs to come together for the sake of the children, as well as oddly off-brand positive exhortations that everything happens as it should, even trauma, and there would be less evil in the world if we were more emotionally connected to one another. The message at the end isn’t, “The real exorcist is love,” but it almost seems that way.

In theaters October 6th.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

• Ellen Burstyn as Chris MacNeil
• Ann Dowd as
• Jennifer Nettles as
• Leslie Odom Jr. as Victor Fielding
• Raphael Sbarge as Pastor
• Olivia Marcum as Katherine
• Lidya Jewett as Angela Fielding
• E.J. Bonilla as Father Maddox
• Antoni Corone as Father Phillips
• Amman Abbasi
• David Wingo

Writer (screen story by)

• Danny McBride
• David Gordon Green
• Scott Teems
• Peter Sattler

Cinematographer

• Michael Simmonds
• Timothy Alverson

Writer (based on characters by)

• William Peter Blatty

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The Exorcist: Believer Reviews

In an age where legacy sequels are pumped out like clockwork, having one come out with a personality of any kind is a miracle. That miracle is twofold, as The Exorcist: Believer represents another inspired franchise revival for David Gordon Green.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 22, 2024

The film poses a number of questions in terms of faith, choice, and the impact of trauma, but doesn't delve into any of them. It hops from concept to concept, from character to character, and refers to the source material in a way that feels hokey...

Full Review | Apr 22, 2024

For its entire first half Believer is a moderate success that does not need a link to The Exorcist at all.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Feb 27, 2024

A sizable measure of cinematic sacrilege is on display in this needless sequel.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 1, 2024

Despite the efforts of the director - responsible for the failed new 'Halloween' trilogy - the film meets the minimum requirements to be of interest. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Dec 24, 2023

Sacrilegious to the original and apparently the first of a proposed trilogy, it will be hard to keep faith beyond this lacklustre entry.

Full Review | Nov 28, 2023

The Exorcist: Believer asks us not to put our faith in any specific dogma but rather in people, in love, and in the fact that your neighbor is experiencing pain, and no matter what you believe, THAT is real.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 15, 2023

The outcome is a qualified success – a horror feature that tries to say something profound about good and evil, love and faith, but ultimately creeps around the edges of these big topics.

Full Review | Nov 13, 2023

Believer is a poorly edited-together combination of ideas that had potential. The film starts out as a haunting mystery, but it slowly morphs into an empty and unnecessary sequel.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Nov 10, 2023

This occasionally jump-scary homage fails to break any new ground.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 8, 2023

There are moments in this borderline incoherent mess of a movie in which fans may be convinced that its sole purpose is to try making the original follow-up, 1977’s legendarily godawful Exorcist II: The Heretic, look positively genius by comparison.

Full Review | Nov 8, 2023

Congrats to the filmmaking team, I guess: they might have made some utter, contemptible trash, but at least it's not lazy trash.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Nov 7, 2023

They need to stop making Exorcist movies. We don't need any more!

Full Review | Nov 1, 2023

This was completely unnecessary. The rules were never clear and the various character actions, particularly the lead's, made no sense.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 31, 2023

This is not a good movie and it's even more offensive because the cast is stacked. Not sure how this misfire happened but really hoping we don't get a sequel to this...

As he did with 'Halloween' (2018), director David Gordon Green pays homage to a 1970s classic with just enough new touches to bring it up to date. 'The Exorcist: Believer' may be unnecessary, but it's mostly entertaining.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 29, 2023

The film has good performances, some interesting themes - especially for people of faith - and even a relatively credible drama. Where it fails, unfortunately, is in terms of originality, and more importantly, HORROR. Full review in Spanish.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 28, 2023

The Exorcist is now 50 years old, and luring Burstyn back isn’t enough to render this retread fresh.

Full Review | Oct 27, 2023

An okay movie that I think will become more appreciated over the years as it isn’t the worst that this series has delivered fans.

Despite haunting makeup, practical/visual effects, and editing, the screenwriters fail to take creative risks that would elevate the story.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Oct 26, 2023

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

The Exorcist: Believer

When two girls disappear into the woods and return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, the father of one girl seeks out Chris MacNeil, who's been forever altered by wha... Read all When two girls disappear into the woods and return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, the father of one girl seeks out Chris MacNeil, who's been forever altered by what happened to her daughter fifty years ago. When two girls disappear into the woods and return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, the father of one girl seeks out Chris MacNeil, who's been forever altered by what happened to her daughter fifty years ago.

• David Gordon Green
• Peter Sattler
• Scott Teems
• Lafortune Joseph
• Leslie Odom Jr.
• Gastner Legerme
• 602 User reviews
• 223 Critic reviews
• 39 Metascore
• 1 win & 22 nominations

Top cast 82

• Fisherman #1

• Victor Fielding
• Fisherman #2

• Sorenne Fielding
• Craftsperson
• (as Marie Michele Bazile)
• Mirror Salesman
• Young Boy in Haiti
• Spiritual Reader
• Kid at the Beach
• Mother Crying
• Haitian Doctor

• Angela Fielding

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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia On William Friedkin 's passing, writer and film critic Ed Whitfield posted this on Twitter(X) and Facebook : "William Friedkin once said to me, 'Ed, the guy who made those new Halloween sequels is about to make one to my movie, The Exorcist (1973) . That's right, my signature film is about to be extended by the man who made Pineapple Express (2008) . I don't want to be around when that happens. But if there's a spirit world, and I can come back, I plan to possess David Gordon Green and make his life a living hell.'" Friedkin actually died two months before the movie was released.
• Goofs The demon in this movie, according to the credits, is Lamashtu, therefore, when it sees Chris McNeil, the "We've met before" quote is factually wrong since Chris met Pazuzu instead.

Katherine : Did the power of Christ compel you?

• Connections Featured in Big Brother: Episode #25.26 (2023)
• Soundtracks Kamimizye Written by Yves Boyer and Wilfred Lavaud Performed by Foula Courtesy of Seven Seas Music

User reviews 602

• Oct 5, 2023
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• October 6, 2023 (United States)
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• Quỷ Ám: Tín Đồ
• Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
• Universal Pictures
• Blumhouse Productions
• Morgan Creek Entertainment
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $30,000,000 (estimated)
• $65,537,395
• $26,497,600
• Oct 8, 2023
• $136,294,607

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 51 minutes
• 12-Track Digital Sound
• D-Cinema 96kHz 7.1
• Dolby Atmos
• Dolby Digital

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• The Best <i>Exorcist</i> Is the One Almost Everyone Hates

The Best Exorcist Is the One Almost Everyone Hates

W hen William Friedkin died in August at age 87, the affectionate accolades and tributes started pouring in, as was only right. His career had spanned more than 60 years, but the Friedkin film that lurks in the memory of almost everyone who has seen it is The Exorcist , from 1973, a somber, jaggedly effective work hailed by many as one of the greatest horror films of all time. Friedkin made only one Exorcist film, but in adapting William Peter Blatty’s 1971 best-seller, he’d unwittingly created a renewable resource. The Exorcist has spawned numerous sequels and imitators over the years (one of them, The Exorcist III: Legion, directed by Blatty himself), and it extends its long reach into the present with The Exorcist: Believer, directed by David Gordon Green and starring Leslie Odom Jr . As a movie subject, demonic possession is evergreen . But the greatest, strangest Exorcist film may be neither the first nor the most recent; in fact, it’s the one almost everyone hates, though how anyone can resist the totally out-there vision of James Earl Jones in a locust headdress is beyond me.

Read more: The 14 Most Anticipated Horror Movies of Fall 2023

The 1977 Exorcist II: The Heretic, directed by John Boorman—with the input of his frequent collaborator Rospo Pallenberg—is generally hailed as a camp classic, a ludicrous follow-up to a masterpiece made by a genius. The consensus among many serious-minded people is that it’s just bad; they’ll happily quote its howler dialogue, and point to the ostensibly stiff performance of its star, Richard Burton, as evidence. After a screening of the wholly lackluster Exorcist: Believer, I blurted out to a group of my fellow critics that Exorcist II was my favorite Exorcist film. They told me outright I was crazy, that this could not even be possible. But at this point, I’ve watched Exorcist II so many times that its weird excesses, its sometimes cheap-looking and sometimes dazzling effects, seem perfectly normal to me. Unlike Friedkin’s movie, it’s hardly scary at all, which could be yet another reason horror fans dismiss it. But I find Boorman’s spirit of imagination and inventiveness affecting by itself. Exorcist II takes great leaps, some of which don’t work. Yet even its perceived failures force us to ask questions of ourselves: What do we really expect from a sequel? We want more of the same, only different. If we really love a movie, we may subconsciously want its follow-up to fail; that way, we can remain comfortable in our original judgment, instead of being jarred out of it. A sequel that’s a let-down is an opportunity to say those words that put an extra gloss of validity on our own good taste: Nothing can top the original.

There are, of course, sequels that are even greater than their predecessors—I’d submit The Godfather Part II as Exhibit A. But the issue most people seem to have with Exorcist II is that it’s barely a sequel at all, and even though it stars Linda Blair, who played Regan, the bedeviled preadolescent of the first film, they’re essentially right. In Exorcist II, Blair’s Regan is now a teenager living in New York with her caretaker, Sharon (Kitty Winn, also returning from the first film), while her mother, actress Chris MacNeil, is off filming on location. (Ellen Burstyn refused to come aboard Exorcist II, though she does have a pointless role in The Exorcist: Believer. More on that later.)

It has been four years since Fathers Merrin and Karras (Max von Sydow and Jason Miller) cast out the surly demon that had taken possession of little Regan’s body, instigating some rather impressive 360-degree head-spinning and much spewing of bilious green goo, though it cost them their lives. (Von Sydow appears in Exorcist II in a few flashback scenes.) Regan remembers nothing of the demon’s destructive residency, but there’s still some danger that she may be harboring damaging suppressed memories. Dr. Gene Tuskin (Louise Fletcher), a psychologist who specializes in high-toned hypnosis techniques, is trying to help her. Enter Burton’s Father Philip Lamont, a friend of the late Father Merrin’s who has recently attempted and failed at an exorcism of his own, resulting in a young woman’s death. To distract him from despair, a big-deal Cardinal—played by the aged Paul Henreid, who, some 35 years earlier, had wooed Bette Davis by lighting two cigarettes at once in the spectacular Now, Voyager —has assigned him to investigate the details of Father Merrin’s death. He approaches Dr. Tuskin in the hopes of learning about Regan’s experience, and he and the formerly possessed teen become both mentally and spiritually connected with the help of a humming, flashing-light doohickey called a Synchronizer.

That’s a lot to take in right there, though we haven’t even addressed major plot points like Father Lamont’s time-travel adventure on the back of a flying locust, the physical embodiment of the powerful demon Puzuzu, or the appearance of Jones in that fetching locust headgear. Why locusts at all, you might ask? Boorman is drawing on their fearsome Biblical connotations, but he’s also interested in ewky closeups showing how the collective beating of the swarm’s wings incite them into a violent frenzy, causing them to cannibalize one another. Good times.

Read more: 21 Underrated Horror Movies You Probably Haven't Seen and Can Stream Right Now

It all sounds so silly. And it is, in a way, but it’s also bracingly unapologetic. The plot of Exorcist II makes almost no sense—but when you’re dealing with spiritual mysteries, does it really pay to get too hung up on logic? Exorcist II is one of those hallucinatory fever-dream pictures that you can’t fully believe you just witnessed. (At least not unless you’ve seen it five or six times, as I have.) Part of the story takes place in an African city, resplendent with a natural stone church. Boorman and his crew created this setting, an Emerald City of hardened mud clay, in Warner Bros.’ Burbank studio—the sun, a hard, red-hot circle, hangs so ominously over this landscape that it feels both real and unreal, the phantasmic illusion of a tormented priest. And Dr. Tuskin’s office is a fantastic assemblage of glass panels that reflect and refract images that may be real, or maybe not. At one point we see the real Regan, under the spell of the Synchronizer, and a ghostly version of her past, demon-possessed self engaged in a literal struggle for Dr. Tuskin’s beating heart. It’s a nutty, virtuosic effect, the kind that only a symphonic director like Boorman—the guy behind the marvelous autobiographical reverie Hope and Glory, as well as the Arthurian wonder Excalibur, and the feat of gorgeous madness that is Zardoz —could pull off. And while you wouldn’t call Burton’s performance in Exorcist II one of his best, his eyes alone carry realms of weariness. He’s convincing even when he’s not really trying, maybe because he’s not really trying.

Is Exorcist II objectively greater than Friedkin’s film? Objectively, no. But then, there’s no such thing as objectivity when it comes to explaining why certain films beguile us and others merely earn our admiration. I was 12 when The Exorcist came out, a dutiful Catholic schoolgirl, and our teacher, Sister Joseph, forbade us from seeing it. The bishops—or someone—had decreed that even watching The Exorcist could cause us to become possessed. Yipes! Who needed that? Pimples were bad enough.

When I finally did see it, some 20 years later, I understood why it had why it had terrified audiences upon its release, and also why it had been so controversial. (Though in some ways, it’s the best advertisement for the Catholic Church you could possibly make. Hey, their arcane, rarely used ritual actually worked. ) But Friedkin’s skill and elegance notwithstanding, I still love Exorcist II more. As for Green’s Exorcist: Believer, which starts out strong—evoking all the reasons demons in search of a body to possess can’t resist the hormonal lightning rod of adolescent girls—and ends in a dumb jumble of generic-looking zombie-girl Blumhouse special effects: I’ve already forgotten it. Odom is a terrific actor, and he makes a believably distraught dad. But poor Ellen Burstyn. Long after refusing to appear in Exorcist II, she agrees to show up in this thing—as the older version of Chris, now the ultimate coastal grandma, dressed in floaty, flattering white scarves and ropes of crystal beads—only to get about 10 minutes of screen time, during which her character suffers a needless and stupid indignity. Though it’s not something she could have known some 47 years ago, Burstyn said yes to the wrong Exorcist sequel. If only she’d chosen the one with poetry in its soul.

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‘The Exorcist: Believer’ Review: Double the Possession, Half the Fun

Two young girls bring something nasty home from the woods in this too-busy, uninvolving possession movie.

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‘The Exorcist: Believer’ | Anatomy of a Scene

David gordon green narrates a sequence from his film, featuring leslie odom jr. and lidya jewett..

“Hi, I’m David Gordon Green, the director and co-writer of ‘The Exorcist: Believer.’” [FAUCET KNOB SQUEAK] “So this sequence takes place shortly after the disappearance of Angela Fielding, the daughter of Victor Fielding, played by Leslie Odom Jr. And Angela has been missing for three days and just returned and starts to behave a little bit strangely.” “What you doing up, ladybug? Gotta use the bathroom.” “So with this sequence, I’m starting to establish the unnerving quality of a father that can’t quite explain the behavior of his daughter. One of the lessons I learned on the ‘Halloween’ movies is the effect of a continuous timeline. And so although the sequence is comprised of numerous shots, the effect is one long shot. And that slow burn, that time where there’s no gimmicks that you can process as a viewer, it adds a strange expectation of when something is gonna happen, slow moves, no expression from Angela. It’s almost the neutrality of her face that makes it so unusual because she is so full of charms, and smiles, and loving life. Here we’re starting to see things in a little bit of a subtler grade of expression.” [FAUCET KNOB SQUEAK] “What’d you say?” “Atmosphere is — sound design is subtle music that’s woven into the sound design. You’re a little bit on guard, you’re a little bit on edge as you’re letting that continuity unfold. And then that way, when she’s transcended this geography in a way that we know because we’ve established characters coming and going and walking in and out, it’s all the more unnatural and off putting.”

By Jeannette Catsoulis

A half century ago, the great William Friedkin directed “The Exorcist,” blowing box-office records and audiences’ minds. Now David Gordon Green, not content with mining the “Halloween” franchise for a trilogy of uneven follow-ups, has returned to visit the same fate on one of the highest-grossing films of the 1970s. Kicking off with “The Exorcist: Believer,” this latest recycling project will continue with “The Exorcist: Deceiver,” planned for 2025. No word yet on the third.

If your main gripe with the original was its preoccupation with a single victim and the dogma of just one religious denomination, then this overpopulated sequel has you covered. Clearly believing that more is more, Green and Peter Sattler’s screenplay (which ignores the intervening franchise entries) gives us double the possessed, more than triple the faiths and a passel of enthusiastic exorcists. Keep them straight if you can.

The setup is swiftly efficient. Thirteen years after losing his pregnant wife in a Haitian earthquake, Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) and his daughter, Angela (Lidya Jewett), are settled in Georgia. Aside from tolerating a grumpy neighbor (Ann Dowd) and her complaints about Victor’s trash can management, the two seem happy enough. Then Angela and her friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill) head into the woods for some spiritual hanky-panky, returning three days later with blank memories and disturbing behaviors. Bring on the holy water!

Measured against the often mediocre standards of today’s glut of reboots and reimaginings, “Believer” is slickly professional, its young performers more than up to the task. It’s also disappointingly, if unsurprisingly, cautious, gesturing only wanly toward the original’s potent weave of puberty, religion and corporeal abuse. While no one is asking for lazy reruns of the infamous masturbation scene or that corkscrewing noggin (though both are hinted at here), there are plenty of ways for a filmmaker to till such fertile thematic soil. Instead, Green contents himself with inconsequential tinkering, like switching the gender of the first film’s evil entity. Shame on you if you assumed all demons were male.

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The Exorcist: Believer First Reviews: Leslie Odom Jr. Shines in Underwhelming Sequel

Critics say the new film starts off strong before succumbing to shopworn genre tropes, ultimately failing to make effective use of ellen burstyn's return to the franchise and uphold the exorcist legacy..

TAGGED AS: First Reviews , Horror , movies

Here’s what critics are saying about The Exorcist: Believer :

How does Believer compare to the original?

“Green and his co-writers do a clever job of evoking the original film’s autumnal feel and credible characters while establishing a new setting and new themes that are intriguing in their own right.” – Nicholas Barber, BBC.com

“ The Exorcist: Believer is a more conventional horror tale, with constant dread and eerie thrills: It’s definitely haunting but lacks the first movie’s soulfulness.” – Brian Truitt, USA Today

“ The Exorcist: Believer fails to capture even an ounce of the terror and emotional heft of the late William Friedkin’s original.” – Belen Edwards, Mashable

“ The Exorcist: Believer is a pale reproduction, grafting franchise iconography onto a slick, uninspired production, lacking a compelling reason for its existence or anything of value to say.” – Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot

“While it tries admirably, The Exorcist: Believer is nowhere near as profoundly scary as William Friedkin’s genre-defining chiller.” – Brian Truitt, USA Today

(Photo by Eli Joshua Ade/©Universal Pictures)

Is it scary?

“If there’s one thing an Exorcist movie, be it a sequel, prequel, remake or sequel, needs to be, it’s scary. David Gordon Green’s 50-years later requel, The Exorcist: Believer fails that most fundamental test.” – Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot

“How horrifying can a movie really be when its entire purpose is to deliver, on cue, every trope that decades of demonic-possession movies have geared us to expect?” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Does it start out strong?

“The opening half hour, in which the trauma of missing children is dramatized with a vividness that bleeds, slowly, into the supernatural, exerts a certain pull.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“The first half of The Exorcist: Believer effectively leans into the trauma of something horrible befalling your child, and although it moves fairly slowly, it made me want to give the story the benefit of the doubt even when it turned to cheap jump scares.” – Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot

“Until about halfway through, I was a firm believer in The Exorcist: Believer .” – Nicholas Barber, BBC.com

(Photo by ©Universal Pictures)

Are there any standout performances?

“Leslie Odom Jr. undeniably shines as the movie’s standout, commanding every scene he graces with a quiet intensity. His pervasive presence throughout nearly every frame of the film lends it an emotional depth that arguably surpasses what the movie and its writing deserve.” – Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot

“Odom effectively takes on the lead here and does nicely, as do the two girls who really go through the ringer with no small help from makeup designer Christopher Nelson. Both are excellent.” – Pete Hammond, Deadline Hollywood Daily

“Jewett and O’Neill prove to be excellent successors to Linda Blair’s Regan from the original; both young actors nail the intense physicality and twisted facial expressions that stem from the girls’ possessions, and they are responsible for much of The Exorcist: Believer’ s thrills.” – Rachel LaBonte, Screen Rant

How is Ellen Burstyn in her return to the franchise?

“Chris gets a smaller role in The Exorcist: Believer , but Burstyn certainly makes the most of it. She is a commanding presence onscreen… There’s little question that her appearance is one of the highlights of the movie.” – Rachel LaBonte, Screen Rant

“ The Exorcist: Believer almost immediately sidelines her, once again excluding her from some of the film’s most climactic moments. Burstyn barely gets a chance to do anything.” – Belen Edwards, Mashable

“I was grateful for her saturnine grace until one of the devil girls attacks her, in a Herschell Gordon Lewis moment that Green should have axed right out of the script. Why bring back Ellen Burstyn only to martyr her force?” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“The need to bring back a legacy character even if you have no use for them in the narrative is a clear sign of lazy storytelling, indicative of horror movies having already quickly exhausted the novelty of such returns.” – Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot

What is the film’s biggest problem?

“A film that was shaping up to be an intelligent and respectful homage to The Exorcist descends to the depths of a cheesy, straight-to-streaming rip-off.” – Nicholas Barber, BBC.com

“ The Exorcist: Believer’ s worst sin is the simple fact that it’s boring.” – Belen Edwards, Mashable

“ The Exorcist: Believer often feels like a promotional pamphlet for attending church or one of those ubiquitous Jesus billboards that dot the landscape along rural highways.” – Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot

Is there any hope for the teased sequel?

“It’s no secret Green and powerhouse production company Blumhouse has a trilogy in mind for The Exorcist … As far as first steps, The Exorcist: Believer makes some solid ones.” – Rachel LaBonte, Screen Rant

“With a formidable Believer and two more Exorcist movies in the pipeline, though, at least this franchise still has a prayer.” – Brian Truitt, USA Today

“Perhaps that film could possess even an ounce of The Exorcist’ s power, but given the pure tedium of this attempt at a legacy sequel, I can safely say I’m a nonbeliever.” – Belen Edwards, Mashable

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Liam payne died of trauma, internal and external bleeding, autopsy shows, ‘the exorcist: believer’ review: early intrigue devolves into unoriginal excess in david gordon green’s sequel.

Leslie Odom Jr. heads a cast that includes Ann Dowd and Ellen Burstyn, the latter reprising her role from William Friedkin’s 1973 horror classic for the first time.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Halloween wars: theme parks are fighting for bigger share of scream economy, sega movie 'shinobi' in the works from universal, 'extraction' director sam hargrave, the exorcist: believer.

Release date : Friday, Oct. 6 Cast : Leslie Odom Jr., Lidya Jewett, Olivia O’Neill, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, Ann Dowd, Ellen Burstyn, Raphael Sbarge, Okwui Okpokwasili, Danny McCarthy, E.J. Bonilla, Tracey Graves, Celeste Olivia Director : David Gordon Green Screenwriters : Peter Sattler, David Gordon Green

Working with co-writer Peter Sattler ( Camp X-Ray ) from a story he developed with Halloween collaborators Scott Teems and Danny McBride, Green follows the Friedkin model by patiently developing the story and characters.

Twitchy editing and occasional flashes of hellish imagery aside, the set-up is comparatively restrained for contemporary horror and seems more intent on creating an unsettling atmosphere than hitting us with a full onslaught of demonic mayhem. But once it shifts gears to provide that jolt, this first entry in a planned trilogy descends into numbing familiarity and recycled effects from the standard Blumhouse toolbox. And unlike Green’s Halloween trilogy, which served up diminishing returns with each new installment, Believer condenses that downward trajectory into the first chapter.

The phenomenally successful 1973 Friedkin film remains among the most influential horror ever made for various reasons, not least because it legitimized the genre as serious drama and dialed up the intensity by grounding the supernatural elements in religious belief and the social anxieties that followed the tumult of the late ‘60s protest movement.

Details of that last element are delivered in a laborious info dump by poor Ellen Burstyn , returning for the first time to the role of Chris MacNeill, which landed her a 1974 best actress Oscar nomination. Chris has given up acting and spent a decade after the events of the original film becoming an expert educator on demonic possession. She published a bestseller called “A Mother’s Explanation,” which caused the estrangement of her daughter Regan, whose young soul was The Exorcist ’s battleground.

But the fate reserved for Chris this time around — when she confronts one of the possessed teenagers with a reckless assurance that makes it clear she should have known better — is a gnarly bit of nastiness that would seem more at home in Saw – or Hostel -type torture porn. One wonders if the always classy Burstyn will end up wishing she had kept her distance and her dignity.

She’s not the only one given big speechy mouthfuls to chew on, however, as Ann Dowd also gets a groaner at the end about the nature of good and evil in the modern world.

A prologue set during photographer Victor’s honeymoon in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, opens with the startling image of dogs savagely fighting on the beach before tracking his wife Sorenne (Tracey Graves) as she gets coaxed in the city marketplace into a ritualistic blessing for the protection of the baby she’s carrying. But when Sorenne sustains near-fatal injuries in an earthquake, Victor is forced to make an impossible choice between saving the mother or the child. That choice, later revealed to be not as it appears, is schematically echoed during the feverish heights of the exorcism.

The story picks up 13 years later, with Victor and Angela living in happy harmony in small-town Georgia. But when Angela and her friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill) wander into the woods and attempt to summon the spirit of Angela’s late mother, of course they summon something far less wholesome.

Chronicling the three days that the girls are missing works well to sustain tension during the buildup, fueled by the escalating fears of Victor and of Katherine’s parents, Miranda (Jennifer Nettles) and Tony (Norbert Leo Butz).

As much as Jewett and O’Neill do a solid job showing the alarming progression from their dazed return — discovered in the barn of a farm 30 miles from where they were last spotted, with no memory of the preceding three days — a couple of key factors make their possession less effective than that of Linda Blair’s Regan in the original.

A 12-year-old girl in the early ‘70s, at least in movies, generally tended to be far more vulnerable than two 13-year-olds in the 21st century. Regan still had one foot planted firmly in childhood, while Angela and Katherine are very much on the path to adulthood.

What made the physical torment of Regan so nerve-wracking was the vast chasm between the sweet, chipmunk-cheeked kid and the snarling demon with the sickly face and stringy hair that she became, spewing obscenities with the blood-curdling growl of Mercedes McCambridge. (That nice young clergyman’s mother does what in Hell?) There’s no less distance separating Angela and Katherine from their demonic makeovers, but the ubiquity of young women propelled by inner demons onscreen in the decades since The Exorcist — particularly in J-horror — makes them less disturbing the more monstrous they become.

For that matter, the film also fails to provide credible grounding for their friendship. I found myself wondering what the child of white Bible bashers, who’s head of her church’s youth group, would have in common with the cool Black girl whose dad is an atheist — beyond the representational requirements of a modern franchise extension.

The exorcism itself also falls short as a climactic set-piece. In place of a petrified single mother whose child has become a ghastly aberration, and the two well-drawn priests locked in her icy bedroom to expel the demon from its unwitting host, there’s a crowd on hand this time around, with only one or two of them getting much in the way of character development.

In addition to the ever-reliable Dowd, the chief asset here is Odom, who brings unfailing integrity to his performance even where the script doesn’t earn it. Also in the room, where Angela and Katherine are strapped into back-to-back chairs bolted to the floor, are Miranda and Tony, respectively fretful and anguished; their Pentecostal pastor (Raphael Sbarge); that ritualistic healer (Okwui Okpokwasili); a Catholic priest in defiance of the skeptical diocese seniors (E.J. Bonilla); and another neighbor of Victor’s (Danny McCarthy), who has no notable usefulness as a character and yet is somehow always around.

DP Michael Simmonds, who shot Green’s Halloween trilogy, gives Believer a moody look, with lots of brooding night scenes and an unhealthy pallor that takes hold as the situation gets hairier. Editor Tim Alverson keeps the action churning and goes admirably light on jump scares. And the music by David Wingo and Amman Abbasi turns up the tension, even if there’s nothing here to rival the needling effectiveness of Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells,” which makes a welcome return in key moments, albeit in a remix that nixes the bells.

That watered-down version of an inspired horror theme is symptomatic of a movie that starts out full of promise but fumbles the material as the stakes get higher. It’s no surprise that Believer is less terrifying than its venerable progenitor. That it’s considerably less daring than a movie made half a century ago compounds the disappointment.

Full credits

Distribution: Universal Production companies: Blumhouse, Morgan Creek Entertainment, in association with Rough House Pictures Cast: Leslie Odom Jr., Lidya Jewett, Olivia O’Neill, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, Ann Dowd, Ellen Burstyn, Raphael Sbarge, Okwui Okpokwasili, Danny McCarthy, E.J. Bonilla, Tracey Graves, Celeste Olivia Director: David Gordon Green Screenwriters: Peter Sattler, David Gordon Green; screen story by Scott Teems, Danny McBride, David Gordon Green Producers: Jason Blum, David Robinson, James G. Robinson Executive producers: David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, Stephanie Allain, Ryan Turek, Brian Robinson, Christopher Merrill, Mark David Katchur, Atilla Yücer Director of photography: Michael Simmonds Production designer: Brandon Tonner-Connolly Costume designers: Lizz Wolf, Jenny Eagan Music: David Wingo, Amman Abbasi Editor: Tim Alverson Special makeup effects designer: Christopher Nelson Casting: Terri Taylor, Sarah Domeier Lindo, Ally Conover

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