The Exorcist: Believer

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!

"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.

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.

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.

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.