Fifty years ago, The Exorcist was a game-changing movie in the horror genre as well as American cinema. It still remains one of the scariest movies to this day. So, when it came time to make success on the movie, The Exorcist II: The Heretic was made and its one of the worst sequels ever if not one of the worst horror movies and that’s saying alot. William Freidkin who directed the first one said he felt like it was The Producers, Mel Brooks’ satire about making a musical romance about Adolf Hitler.
William Peter Blatty, who wrote and produced the first movie, returned to adapt his book Legion for the third one, which was called The Exorcist III over his objection. It was released in 1990 and was a modest success. Over the years, it’s gained a cult status for Blatty’s direction and the performances. It also includes one of the best jumpscares (that is earned) in movie history.
In the 2000s, Morgan Creek Production made not one but two prequels with Stellan Skarsgard as Fr. Lancaster Merrin (replacing Max Von Sydow even though he was older than what Von Sydow was at the time). Paul Schrader made one that the production company realized wouldn’t work commercially and hired Renny Harlin to direct and Alexi Hawley to rewrite the script by William Wisher and Caleb Carr. Neither version really is that good. Dominion: A Prequel to The Exorcist was released in 2005, a year after The Exorcist: Beginning was released. Both got bad reviews, yet Dominon found a few good reviews mostly by the late Roger Ebert.
It seemed that The Exorcist franchise was dead once and for all. And that’s the way it should’ve stayed. But still, if David Gordon Green could get Jamie Lee Curtis to return to the Halloween franchise, there was hope when Ellen Burstyn (and Linda Blair in a cameo) were announced to return for The Exorcist: Believer. And then the movie was released and it has to be the biggest disappointment since Super 8.
The plot this time around seems to double-down on the concept of the original but giving us not one tween girl who’s possessed but two. But there’s so much going on here, they eventually becoming nothing but minor characters. Regan (Blair) was always central to the first movie. But David Gordon Green throws so much on screen, we never do care about them. The two girls, Angela Fielding (Lidya Jewett) and Katherine West (Olivia O’Neill), are so one-dimensional that it’s hard to care about them at all.
Beginning in 2010 during the Haiti earthquake, Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) is on a honeymoon with his pregnant wife, Sorene (Tracey Graves), who is one of the many who is severely injured and Victor only has the choice of saving the child or his wife. He chooses his child. Thirteen years later, he lives in a small Georgia town as a photographer. (There’s a few issues I want to take with the setting that I will discuss later.)
Before we even really know what’s happening, Angela and Katherine go off in a field on day after school to perform a seance to contact Sorene. Victor has lost his faith in God and Christianity, but Katherine is raised in a southern Baptist home. They don’t come home and Victor discovers that Angela was friends with Katherine and her parents may just be racists. Miranda and Tony West (Jennifer Nettles and Norbet Leo Butz) seem to be stereotypical southern Christian characters. Considering this is the second time in a few years Butz has played this character as he did so in the true-crime series The Girl from Plainville, maybe he should do something else before getting typecast.
I know the filmmakers wanted to take advantage of the Georgia Film Commission’s tax credits, but Green, who along with Peter Sattler, Scott Teems and Danny McBride, could’ve tried to make the Wests less religious than they are. I know McBride was born in Georgia and raised in a Baptist house but I never felt the movie really showed things the right way that William Peter Blatty, a Catholic himself, did with the original.
Part of the problem is Victor’s turning his back on God seems so much a cliched trope it was mocked by critics of God’s Not Dead. In the first movie, Fr. Damian Karras (Jason Miller) was already questioning his faith and that was leading him to also question whether he should remain a priest and counsel others. After his mother dies, he feels guilt choosing the priesthood over a private practice as a psychiatrist as it meant his mother would’ve probably lived better than in the dilapidated apartment she died in. Karras is questioning the choices while I never felt Victor did in a meaningful manner.
Also, since the Wests are an extremely religious family, we get more tired images of Katherine appearing before the whole congregation as she’s possessed. The two girls went missing for three days before they were found in a barn stable many miles away. Miranda believes they went to Hell like Jesus did after dying on the cross and came back. But Victor doesn’t believe in it. Nor does he initially believe in any religious advice after being contacted by Ann (Ann Dowd). She’s a nurse who feels Angela is possessed when the girl speaks in a demonic voice calling her by the name she had chosen as she was planning to be a nun. But she had an abortion and decided she could continue on being a nun.
The movie’s all over the place with characters who pop up and say things. I found Ann to be a more complex character than the rest. When Victor finally reads the book Ann gives him written by Chris MacNeil, he takes a ride to visit her. Yet, Burstyn’s role seems less of a surprise and more of a letdown as she’s not given much to do. It kinda yadda-yaddas over the fact that MacNeil, a famous actress, claimed her daughter was possessed and people act surprised by this decades later.
Eventually, everyone begins to realize that yes Angela and Katherine are possessed leading to the inevitable exorcism scenes. But by that time, the movie itself has already gone to Hell. I didn’t find the make-up they used on either young actress to be the least bit scaring. Instead, it was more comical. With their Neanderthal-like foreheads and facial prostetheics, I don’t think even a child would be scared just weirded out.
The ending sets up a possible sequel and the movie’s success at the box office pretty much has greenlit one set to be released in 2025 with a hint that Blair might make a bigger role. It would be an improvement over Odom’s performance who seems to add nothing new to this type of role. Like I said, the Ann character is the most interesting here. But who knows if she will be in the second one?
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 