After four dreary sequels, it’s about time someone put an end to the Exorcist franchise. The series kicked off with a delightful nightmare that turned heads around the country, but then came a string of misfires that weren’t so much scary as terrifyingly silly, which seems to be a common theme amongst horror classics. You thought Texas Chainsaw Massacre was spooky? Here comes four more installments that are far less effective. Director David Gordon Green tries to hide this franchise’s sequel/reboot skeletons in the closet with The Exorcist: Believer, but he ends up adding one more corpse to a mountainous pile.
The film is a textbook example of how studios continue to churn out worthless reboots, taking game changers and stretching them into legacy sequels that bare none of the qualities that made the first entry a success. It doesn’t matter if the camera doesn’t glide, if the mood doesn’t chill or the art-house sensibilities are gone, as long as audiences are willing to pay for something with the logo on it, which leads us to more crummy films like this one.
There aren’t many similarities between Believer and The Exorcist. They both have possessed girls and that’s about it. The rest of this shameless cash grab from Blumhouse is chock full of the studio’s nasty visuals and excessively operatic shocks. Despite a restrained opening–in which Green introduces his protagonists–Believer quickly shifts into a jolt factory centered around grief.
Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.) lives with his daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett) on the outskirts of town, where they try to get over the loss of her beloved mother. On a foggy afternoon, Angela and her friend Katherine (Olivia O’ Neill) decide to wander into the forest for a little escape, but return two days later with no memory of their adventure. Uh oh! Looks like it’s time to call a priest.
Just like the heroine in 1973, the girls slowly start to experience body changes that are supposed to resemble puberty…
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