दि एक्सॉर्सिस्ट: बिलीवर

After defiling the Halloween saga with his insipid sequel trilogy, David Gordon Green brings his desecrating vision to yet another beloved horror classic and leaves no stone unturned to insult its unparalleled legacy. Nothing less than an eyesore, The Exorcist: Believer is one of the worst films to surface this year and makes for a wretched, unholy & sacrilegious mess that itself is in desperate need of an exorcism.

Also co-written by Gordon Green (Halloween Kills & Halloween Ends), the story never is able to create any sense of intrigue throughout its runtime and only gets worse as it progresses. There is no emotional weight to its setup, it is severely lacking in atmosphere, is downright ineffective in the scary department with its tired tropes & clichéd attempts. And characters remain distant as well. There isn't one aspect that's executed well.

Where the original was pioneering in its use of horror set pieces, practical effects, sound design & storytelling, this follow-up chapter has got nothing to capture our attention. Everything it tries fails to work out, its attempts to scare the viewers only ends up being hilarious and what it does with Chris MacNeil is not only facepalm-inducing but also mind-numbingly moronic. Acting from all is forgettable and the finale is a neutered, dumbed-down version.

Overall, The Exorcist: Believer is an incompetently directed, shoddily scripted and awfully acted sequel that has no understanding of what makes The Exorcist such an enduring masterpiece of its genre. Much worse than what the negative reception will have you thinking, the film has zero redeemable qualities, offers more laughs than scares by playing out like a parody than a proper sequel and is horror filmmaking at its most bland & uninteresting. In a word, cringeworthy.

"The Exorcist: Believer" is a film whose trailer was better and which promised an old school style story but adding new elements, the result was not terrible but it was bad. The script starts without much interest, the scenes of the first symptoms of demonic possession were quite simple and did not create tension, the exorcism scenes fail to stand out and feel illogical, during this part of the film it manages to have a couple of good scenes. Using characters from the original film makes no sense, their participation is almost irrelevant but it is nice to see them again. Within the aforementioned script, an attempt was made to give it a new perspective with the theme of religions and a union with a common good, but it completely fails to innovate and they treat it in a simple way. The performances are average, the two possessed girls do not achieve the masterful performance that Linda Blair achieved in 1973. David Gordon Green fails miserably in his work as a director, the cinematography is decent, on the soundtrack it is appreciated to hear the legendary "Tubular Bells" although with certain changes that are not poorly achieved and the makeup effects look gloomy. The positive points are few and the negative ones are more, a soulless sequel.

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.

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.

95 minutes of plot building for a 10 minutes exorcist that was literally the lamest and most boring I've ever seen. And there wasn't even any plot. Nothing was explained about the demon, it's intentions or where it came from. There were no meaningful conversations with the possessed, no head spinning, no vomiting... The trailer was false advertising. No jump scares, no tension building, 1 death... just utter droll. The popes exorcist was better than this and it was lame too compared to Emily Rose and the original. I'm not sure what they were writing here but it wasn't a horror movie. Had me reaching for my phone a dozen times I was so bored.