L'Exorciste : Dévotion

I knew this was never going to surpass the original, but the trailers looked decent, so what the heck, right? The first red flag was the director. He did a pretty good job on the 2018 Halloween. Then the other two came out and oh my, talk about how to ruin a good thing. Now he decides to take the driver seat to one of the most iconic horror movies ever made. The two child actors do a good job, they do have some creepy scenes and the movie has some decent parts to it, but overall, I left the theater just feeling like things could have been executed better. Now I hear that this will be a trilogy now too? Yeah, no thanks.

Ouch....

This was a terrible film, when will they realise that trashy followups such as this are just pointless and unnecessary. The original is a classic, a movie that lived on in the minds of people for decades, this one, you'll forget about within just a few days.

It was only about an hour and a half long, but it felt painfully long, nothing happens until the final ten minutes or so, but even that bit of excitement was underwhelming.

I was genuinely excited by the trailer, and seeing Ellen Burstyn added extra excitement, but the trailer flattered the film, credit to whomever put that together, sadly the film was drab, slow and totally uninteresting.

I know I'd mentally zoned out about two thirds through, but there seemed to be no explanation, who the demon was, what its purpose was, the story was just so disjointed, dare I say badly realised.

It should have been a Halloween chiller, it remained tepid from start to finish.

4/10.

I tried to like it, but after some 10 minutes into the movie I began to fear that this was a complete and utter dud. And it turned out I was right.

The bad: it is suppose to be horror, but it isnt horrifying for one minute. A bit freaky and strange, but definitely not scary. And I wanna get scared watching such a movie. That is the whole point of making horror movies.

More bad: besides a wonderful performance by the ever great Ellen Burstyn, none of the other actors impressed me. The 2 kids, who were possessed were okay, but not terrific either. But the other actors were plain average or even below average.

Defnitely an insult to the classic original from 1973, which was an absolute shocker of a classic!

PROS: Strong performances from most of the cast. A solid set up in the first block of the film that makes us empathize with the characters.

CONS: After the set up and possessions, the film flatlines. There seem to be too many ideas floating around that never get handled properly. The creepy factor was null and void. A couple of jump scares are thrown in. Perhaps the film's biggest mistake is having the legacy character, Chris (Ellen Burstyn), wasted here as the studio's cliche cash grab for nostalgic fans. An overall weak script, cringe dialogue, and plenty of corny group exorcism moments to go around. The film really treats its audience like they're stupid. Skip this and watch the original instead.

Sometimes it's ok to just let these classic movies live on as their own thing. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to give the director a shot at this franchise because... those 3 new Halloween movies are atrocious. Not funny, not scary, did not need to be made.

I was bored to tears with this film and kept looking at my watch to see how close it was to being over. The characters were forgettable, the story is nothing new, and I had to stop myself from laughing out loud at the acting quite a number of times.

Just watch the original and then if you want a follow up, watch the director's cut that has some extra scenes.