We probably don’t talk enough about what a bizarre series the Exorcist films have turned out to be. The franchise is a case study in the perils of massive initial success. The original Exorcist, directed by the late William Friedkin in 1973, wasn’t just a hit; it was a world-altering phenomenon. Then things got interesting. The great John Boorman — just as much a maverick as Friedkin had been, and similarly acclaimed — was hired to make Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), a first-ballot entry into the Flop Hall of Fame. (I say that as one of its semi-defenders. Heretic is a crazy movie, and I enjoy watching it, but I’m not sure that I could ever call it “good.â€) William Peter Blatty, the author of the original novel, stepped behind the camera in 1990 to direct the third entry. That one wasn’t well liked, either, though time has been kinder to it.
Then came the truly weird tale of the fourth picture. Paul Schrader was hired to direct Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist after the initial choice, John Frankenheimer, fell ill. The studio didn’t like Schrader’s rather somber effort, and after several rounds of postproduction bickering, Renny Harlin was brought in to essentially shoot a whole new film, the frantic and incoherent Exorcist: The Beginning (2004). That also turned out to be a disaster, whereupon a scraped-together edit of Schrader’s version was released in 2005. So there are now two separate fourth Exorcist movies, very different and somehow both starring Stellan Skarsgard. Neither is good.
A sordid industry saga, to be sure, but there is nevertheless a sweet undercurrent to it: Even though the Exorcist movies have been handled by different studios and different producers over the years, whoever’s in charge has always tried to hire a director of genuine vision to try and create something different (yes, even Renny Harlin, shut up), perhaps in hopes of recapturing the magic accomplished by Friedkin, who, after all, was coming off the Oscar-winning French Connection when he made the first film.
Which brings us to David Gordon Green, director of The Exorcist: Believer. One’s view of Green will surely change depending on which side of the career prism they’re looking through. He began as an independent director of acclaimed, sensitive, ethereal slices of small-town life (George Washington, All the Real Girls), then transformed into a guy who made stoner studio comedies (Pineapple Express, Your Highness). He then returned to his indie roots for a bit (Prince Avalanche, Manglehorn) before reinventing himself as a horror-franchise-reboot artist, with 2018’s Halloween and its two sequels.
Some have surely written Green off as a once-promising talent who sold his soul to the all-powerful Hollywood cash grab. Perhaps they’re right, but the evidence often suggests otherwise. His first Halloween picture was a solid, serious attempt to advance the mood of John Carpenter’s originals. Yes, the second entry, Halloween Kills (2020), was a hot mess, but the subsequent Halloween Ends (2022) was an offbeat delight, an attempt to fuse the compassion of Green’s early films with the demands of a horror sequel. In its romanticism, in how it explored the frustrations of being an outsider in a community that had closed its doors, and in the way it used that emotional pressure to conjure its obligatory genre demons, Halloween Ends carried a unique charge. It was far from perfect, but it felt more like a David Gordon Green picture than a Halloween picture.
One gets a similar vibe from the early scenes of The Exorcist: Believer, which begins with two married American photographers traveling in Haiti, only for the pregnant wife to be mortally injured during the massive earthquake of 2010. At the hospital, the husband, Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.), is told that he has to choose between saving the life of the mother or the child. We then fast-forward to Victor and his 13-year-old daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett) living in Percy, Georgia. When Angela disappears into the woods after school one day with her friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill), Victor’s panic is palpable — as is his refusal to believe in any kind of merciful deity when Katherine’s heavily religious parents broach matters of the spirit with him. The girls are found three days later, but something has clearly changed in them. Thus begin the creepy utterances, the seizures, the sudden appearances in church covered in blood and shrieking.
The first half of Believer is refreshingly free of the kind of cheap jump scares that so many horror sequels cynically rely on. Instead, Green (and co-screenwriter Danny McBride, a regular collaborator) tries to conjure situational fear. We’re not afraid of demons in these early scenes, but of more direct terrors like a parent losing their child, or a child losing control of her mind and body. Those looking for standard genre thrills will probably be disappointed by these early scenes. I was enraptured by them, as Green and McBride establish a mood of believable dread.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t last, and Believer collapses mightily in its second half. To some extent, it shares a fundamental problem with most exorcism movies not released in 1973: There’s only so much you can do with a bunch of people in a room screaming, and William Friedkin basically did it all. But Believer compounds that failure by trying to steer clear of the overt Christian mythology of the genre. The Exorcist, the original, is a pretty heavy-duty advertisement for God and for the more traditional practices of a then-modernizing Catholic Church, so effective that it makes even godless heathens like me question our lack of belief over the course of two agonizing, hair-raising hours. Never forget: The priests are the heroes of these movies. But Believer tries to have it both ways. It brings in other religions and cultures into the mix in an attempt to explain that, really, exorcism is universal. It then takes the idea further and suggests that what will really defeat the devil isn’t potions and spells and prayers but community and togetherness. Aaaah, the kindness, it burns!
One can see what Green is trying to do here. He’s still trying to bring this genre piece into his inclusive, communal, almost romantic world, the way he did with Halloween Ends. In his eyes, Believer is less about exorcism but about the idea of lost children — children unwanted, children forgotten, children for whom parental love cannot compensate for a gnawing absence. Unfortunately, he’s still making an Exorcist movie, and he doesn’t seem all that interested in exorcism itself, brushing past specifics and relying instead on a lot of vague, albeit obligatory, shouting and pyrotechnics.
Think of how well we remember details from The Exorcist: lines, gestures, effects, Pazuzu. That’s because Friedkin took everything at face value and focused on the specifics of what he was shooting. I saw Believer three days ago, and I barely remember anything from its exorcism scenes. This wouldn’t be a problem if they didn’t take up pretty much the entire back half of the movie. One wonders if there’s another cut of this film somewhere, one in which the characters are given more room to breathe, one in which the nonsensical exorcism scenes take up less space. In a way, it would be appropriate if there were. Because that would really make this an Exorcist movie — another proudly troublesome and uneven entry in a series that seems to be as cursed as its characters.